Syntactic and Semantic Abilities of Bilingual versus Monolingual Preschoolers with Language Impairment and ADHD

Abstract

This study examined the semantic and syntactic abilities of monolingual versus bilingual children with concurrent LI and ADHD in English. Sixteen children aged 4 to 7 years of age presenting with concurrent LI and ADHD participated in the study, eight were in the monolingual group and eight in the bilingual group.A story retell task was used to elicit narratives from each participantwhich were then analyzed for various syntactic and semantic productions. No differences were found between the 2 groups in useof grammatical morphology, percentage of mazes produced, and mean length of utterance. The bilingual group had higher rates of complex sentences and lexical diversity, while the monolingual group produced a higher number of utterances per narrative sample.The study concluded that bilingualism presents no disadvantage for children with concurrent LI and ADHD and, in this particular study, indicated an advantage for sentence complexity and vocabulary diversity.