A Longitudinal Analysis of Sentence Repetition by Spanish–English Bilinguals With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

PURPOSE: Sentence repetition (SR), a task that involves the oral imitation of sentences containing target linguistic forms, is linked to children's language proficiency and ability. Among bilingual children, it can be challenging to determine benchmarks for typical and atypical SR performance due to variations in past and current language experiences. METHOD: In this cross-sequential longitudinal analysis of 268 Spanish-English bilinguals, we investigated the effects of developmental language disorder (DLD) status, age of first language exposure, and time-varying current language exposure on SR in both Spanish and English. Our findings model 7-year trajectories (from ages 5 to 12 years) of SR development by children with and without DLD across varying degrees of language exposure. RESULTS: All children demonstrated gains in both languages over time. Spanish scores were higher than English scores at baseline, but English performance increased at approximately twice the rate of Spanish, resulting in comparable or higher English mastery by 12 years of age. Children with typical language development (TD) consistently outperformed their peers with DLD within each language, although growth patterns differed by language. In English, children with TD and those with DLD showed similar growth rates, maintaining a persistent performance gap. In Spanish, relatively modest growth among children with TD and steeper growth among children with DLD led to a reduction in the TD-DLD gap over time. Both cumulative and current language exposure contributed to SR performance, with differential effects across languages and diagnostic groups. CONCLUSION: These findings highlight the importance of accounting for language history in educational and clinical programming.