Which therapy language helps bilingual children with developmental language disorder
Official title: The relationship between child language proficiency and language of treatment on the outcomes of bilingual children with developmental language disorder
Funded at University of Houston · NIH-11324265 · Data updated 2026-11-12
Speech therapy in English, Spanish, or both will be compared to see which approach best helps bilingual children with developmental language disorder based on their language strengths.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | University of Houston NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Houston, United States) |
| Project start | May 1, 2023 |
| Project end | April 30, 2028 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $657,483 |
| NIH project number | 5R01DC020183-04 |
| Project ID | NIH-11324265 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal candidates are Spanish-English bilingual children in the preschool to early school-age range who have a diagnosis of developmental language disorder and limited confounding conditions like hearing loss or intellectual disability.
✕Less likely to help
Children who are monolingual, or whose speech difficulties are due to autism, hearing impairment, or intellectual disability rather than developmental language disorder, are unlikely to benefit directly from this work.
What this research studies
If your child speaks both Spanish and English and has trouble learning language, this work compares giving therapy in one language versus the other or in both to see how each approach affects progress. Children will be grouped by their current proficiency in each language and will receive targeted therapy while clinicians measure changes in both Spanish and English. The team will look for evidence that skills learned in one language transfer to the other and will use standardized language tests and observations over time. Results aim to give clearer guidance to families and speech-language therapists about which language(s) to use in treatment.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, the project could show which therapy language(s) lead to bigger language gains for bilingual children, helping therapists choose more effective treatments.
How similar studies have gone: Research has shown some cross-language transfer in experimental tasks, but direct clinical comparisons of therapy language for bilingual children with developmental language disorder are limited.
Where this research is happening
-
University of Houston
Houston, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Mills, Monique T — University of Houston
- Study coordinator: Mills, Monique T
Related research
Other NIH-funded projects on the same topics.
-
Retrieval-based Word Learning for Young Children with Developmental Language Disorder
A project helps 4- to 5-year-olds with language disorder learn new words more effectively using memory-based learning tricks.
-
Predicting Developmental Language Delay in Young Children
A study of young children to identify early signs that predict developmental language delay, using timing and processing measures from two new language screening tools.
-
Understanding how infants’ early speech becomes language skills and how it might signal language disorders
This grant studies how a baby’s brain learns sounds in the first year of life and whether early patterns can predict and prevent language disorders.
-
Language in adults with and without Developmental Language Disorder
This grant helps researchers study how language abilities develop and change in adults with and without developmental language disorder to improve understanding and support.
-
Understanding short-term verbal memory in children and adults with Developmental Language Disorder
A study to understand the memory and language links in people with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) across kids and adults.
-
Computer-assisted bilingual vocabulary help for kids with language disorder
A computer-assisted program helps monolingual clinicians teach bilingual Spanish-English vocabulary to emergent bilingual children with developmental language disorder.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.