Not All Nonverbal Tasks Are Equally Nonverbal: Comparing Two Tasks in Bilingual Kindergartners With and Without Developmental Language Disorder.

Purpose This study investigates the interaction of language ability status, cultural experience, and nonverbal cognitive skill performance in Spanish-English bilinguals with typical development (TD) and developmental language disorder (DLD). Method One hundred sixty-nine Spanish-English bilingual kindergartener's scores on the Symbolic Memory and Cube Design subtests from the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (Bracken & McCallum, 1998) were analyzed by language ability (TD vs. DLD). Results t tests and analysis of variance showed bilingual children with TD and DLD performed comparably to the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test norming sample on the cube design task, while children with DLD had significantly lower performance on the symbolic memory task. Conclusion These results suggest that cultural experience minimally impacted performance for bilingual children with typically developing language. Bilingual children with DLD were differentially impacted on symbolic memory, a task that is verbally mediated despite nonverbal administration and performance. Findings are discussed within the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory of cognitive abilities.