Description

Purpose: In this study, we examine whether bilinguals with a history of Developmental Language Disorder (HxDLD) demonstrate a difference in lexical access compared to bilingual individuals without a history of Developmental Language Disorder (NoDLD). We assess whether both groups (HxDLD, NoDLD) are sensitive to translation equivalents across their languages with phonologically similar forms (cognates) compared to translation equivalents with minimal cross-linguistic overlap (noncognates). Method: Twenty-three English-dominant Spanish-English bilinguals participated. They were between the ages of 18-21 years. There were no significant differences between the groups across age, Spanish-English language background, and education. The task is a word comprehension, eye-tracking-while-listening task in both English and Spanish. There are 184 trials split between 92 cognate targets and 92 noncognate targets. We examined participants' time-course of eye-fixations to the target pictures and distractors to index lexical activation patterns. Results: On the English task, NoDLD participants were more accurate overall than HxDLD participants, and cognates were recognized more accurately than noncognates, especially when the distractor was a noncognate. On the Spanish task (less dominant language), cognates were recognized more accurately and quickly overall, showing a clear cognate effect in both groups. NoDLD participants were quicker to respond overall and demonstrated a higher proportion of looks to target images than HxDLD participants. Conclusion: As revealed in the results, evidence from the Spanish task suggests lexical access differences for HxDLD participants. Lexical access was slower and participants took more time to rule out distractors in their less dominant language, Spanish. Both groups (HxDLD, NoDLD) showed clear cognate effects in their less dominant language (Spanish). These findings suggest that, during word comprehension, individuals with a HxDLD show differences in how they activate and retrieve words. While these differences are subtle in their dominant language, they are more apparent in their non-dominant language.