Developmental speech and/or language impairment in multilingual populations : a review

Abstract

It is estimated that approximately two-thirds of the world's population is multilingual. This includes a significant proportion of children with speech and/or language difficulties. A recent study reported a referral incidence of 14.6% for primary speech/language disability in a large population in England. Since bilingualism per se is not thought to cause communication impairment, its incidence should be the same in both monolingual and multilingual speakers.