Early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds in monolingual and bilingual children: An exploratory investigation

Purpose: To examine the accuracy of early-, middle-, and late-developing (EML) sounds in Spanish-English bilingual children and their monolingual peers. Method: Twenty-four typically developing children, age 3-4 years, were included in this study: 8 bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children, 8 monolingual Spanish speakers, and 8 monolingual English speakers. Single-word speech samples were obtained to examine (a) differences on the accuracy of EML sounds between Spanish-English bilingual children and monolingual Spanish and monolingual English children and (b) the developmental trend on the accuracy of EML sounds within languages for Spanish-English bilingual children and monolingual Spanish and monolingual English children. Results: Findings support those of Shriberg (1993) for English-speaking children and suggest possible EML categories for monolingual Spanish-speaking children and bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children. Conclusions: These exploratory findings indicate the need for longitudinal examination of EML categories with a larger cohort of children to observe similarities and differences between monolingual and bilingual development.