The Case for Bilingualism in Children With Down Syndrome

This chapter reviews research on typical monolingual and bilingual development with a particular focus on developmental findings in terms of the sequence and rate of language development in bilingual as compared to monolingual children. It provides some assistance to parents and practitioners when making decisions about bilingualism for individuals with Down syndrome (DS) and others with cognitive and language disabilities, and serves as an impetus for additional much needed research in this area. Bilingual children have different experiences with bilingualism. They differ in the languages to which they are exposed, the degree to which they are exposed to each language, the timing of exposure, and the context of exposure. Language-specific developmental differences are evident in both monolingual and bilingual children. Language-learning difficulties in monolingual children with DS often exceed expectations, given their cognitive impairments. The literature on bilingual individuals with intellectual disabilities is even sparser than that for bilingual children with specific language impairment.