Where to start: Use of the bilingual multidimensional ability scale (B-MAS) to identify developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children.

Abstract

Purpose: The identification of developmental language disorder (DLD) is challenging for clinicians who assess bilinguals. This paper introduces a protocol-based approach, the Bilingual Multidimensional Ability Scale (B-MAS), for expert raters to identify DLD in bilinguals.

Method: Three bilingual speech-language pathologists (SLPs) reviewed 166 Spanish-English bilingual children's profiles, which included performance on direct (morphosyntax, semantics, and narrative tasks) and indirect (parent/teacher survey) measures in both languages. A multidimensional scale (0-5) was adopted to rate children's performance. A diagnosis of DLD was made if at least two raters assigned a summary rating of ≤2.

Result: Analysis of the scores on the B-MAS resulted in the identification of 21 children as having DLD. Though different strategies were employed to make decisions, the three SLPs demonstrated high inter-rater agreement across different ratings (intraclass correlation coefficient values ranged from .83 to .90).

Conclusion: For bilingual populations that are understudied and for which gold standards of assessment are not available, the B-MAS can be adopted as a starting point to study DLD or as a reference standard to develop new assessment tools in that population. Clinically, this protocol could be tailored and evaluated by a group of SLPs serving a large population of a particular bilingual group for diagnostic purposes.