A new “Vienna model” for assessing bilingual children with suspected speech disorders

Review by Emily Henderson, Bachelor of ScienceNovember 16, 2020

About 45% of Austrian nursery children have a first language other than German. People who have difficulty learning a second language are often diagnosed with suspected “language acquisition disorders.” In fact, this often only reflects the fact that they have not yet fully mastered a second language. MedUni A team of linguists led by Brigitte Eisenwort of the Outpatient Clinic for Children with Suspected Language Acquisition Disorders at the Pediatrics and Youth Medical School in Vienna investigated the problem in the context of a case study.

In this study, we applied the “Vienna model”, which incorporates medical students who are native speakers of the child’s first language, to facilitate more accurate diagnosis.The study is currently published in the journal Neuropsychiatry..

In 2019, an average of about 2.1 million Austrian residents came from the background of migration. More and more children are growing in multiple languages ​​due to demographic changes due to migration over the last few decades. Many of them present problems with learning a second language (German) and are often diagnosed with suspected “impairment of language acquisition”, but the real problem is that they are still complete with a second language. I haven’t learned it. This is due to the similarities between manifest functions that can only be distinguished by experts.

In search of a more accurate diagnosis, many of these children with a migration background are capable of assessing four children a week for children suspected of having language acquisition problems at the Pediatrics and Youth Medical Schools of MedUni Vienna I go to an outpatient clinic in Vienna. The clinic uses the “Vienna model” of language evaluation. This means that native language medical students of the child will help MedUni Vienna linguists analyze their child’s linguistic abilities in the first language. This has the advantage of being able to identify specific cultural aspects as well as grammatical skills.

As a general rule, it is possible to assist with native speakers studying other subjects, but involving medical students provides a simultaneous experience of doctor-patient communication and developmental disabilities, especially language acquisition. Obstacles as part of their research have the great advantage of providing background knowledge about. “

Brigitte Eisenwort, Research Leader

Of the approximately 40 children evaluated in 2019, approximately half were found to have no clinically relevant language acquisition disorders. Instead, the problem was with destructive sociolinguistic factors, such as restricted input in the native language.

Eisenwart said: “Many children with immigrant backgrounds are restricted from entering their native language, for example because their parents themselves acquired a native language that was oppressed for political reasons and could not convey a rich vocabulary. In the process of migration, complex sentence structures and sophisticated vocabulary were no longer needed and could not be passed on to children. “

According to Eisenwart, an important factor in evaluating a child is to first get a detailed language history and then evaluate the child in both or all languages. Eisenwart suggests that an important way to improve the language proficiency of the majority language is to give children the opportunity to communicate with native German speakers in small groups. The next research project to be launched soon is a joint project with the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) Acoustics Institute, focusing on phonetics for “children in Vienna with native languages ​​other than German”. I guess. Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian native language, bilingual children’s voice skills.