Exploring SLDs in Bilingual School-Age Children Who Speak Cantonese and English

Abstract

<p>Stuttering, characterized by disruptions in speech fluency, typically manifests between ages 2 and 5 when children begin forming sentences. A commonly used method for identifying stuttering relies on speech disfluency criteria (>3% stuttering-like disfluencies, SLDs) developed for monolingual English-speaking children. However, research suggests that applying these criteria to bilingual children may lead to false-positive stuttering diagnoses. The applicability of these criteria to children speaking languages that are typologically distinct from English remains uncertain. Limited previous research has shown that about 21–68% of preschool Cantonese English-speaking children may show higher than 3% SLDs in their dominant and non-dominant languages (Bakhtiar, 2024). </p><p><br></p><p>This present preliminary study aims to investigate speech disfluencies in bilingual children who speak Cantonese (a syllable-timed language) and English (a stress-timed language). The study considers the impact of language dominance, proficiency, and the specific speaking tasks on occurrence of various speech disfluencies. Forty-five typically fluent school-age children and five children who stutter, all Cantonese English bilinguals, were recruited for the study. Their speech samples were collected across various speaking tasks, including structured conversations, as well as storytelling, and story retelling using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives, in both Cantonese and English (data collection is still ongoing).</p><p><br></p><p>At this stage, speech samples from 23 typically fluent children were analyzed using the Computerized Language Analysis program to assess their frequency and types of speech disfluencies. The results revealed a higher occurrence of SLDs and typical disfluencies (TD) in English compared to Cantonese. Remarkably, 9–60% of children exceeded the 3% SLD criterion across various tasks and languages. Interestingly, speaking tasks did not significantly impact these findings. However, language dominance or proficiency (but not lexical mean length of utterance, MLU) emerged as significant predictors for the percentage of SLDs (p < .001) and TDs (p < .05).</p><p><br></p><p>These findings underscore the need to refine the diagnostic criteria for this population and underscore the importance of considering language dominance and proficiency when assessing speech fluency in bilingual children.</p>