The purpose of this contract is: 1) To collect cross-sectional data on Spanish and English language abilities in normally developing four-to six-year-old bilingual Hispanic children whose primary language is not English or is a nonstandard form of English. 2) To document age-appropriate Spanish and English language milestones/ behaviors for this bilingual population including aspects of phonology, syntax semantics and pragmatics. 3) To use the aforementioned normative data to develop items for a language assessment instrument or procedure which could be used to differentiate between language impairment and normal language development in bilingual Hispanic children. 4) To conduct a study to determine the reliability and validity of the individual items and the overall language assessment instrument or procedure with bilingual Hispanic children.
