Relationships between IQ and language development across language domains in bilingual children

The current study examined if Spanish-English bilingual children with extremely low IQ and average IQ demonstrated similar language development and which language variables were associated with increases or decreases in IQ development. Given the literature, we proposed the following hypotheses: children with extremely low IQ will demonstrate lower than expected language scores than their matched average IQ peer, and children that demonstrate increases in IQ across time will demonstrate increases in language scores. We examined two pairs of bilingual children matched on SES, bilingual status, and age. Despite variability in outcomes, we found a general increase in language measures, which suggests that measures utilized were not directly related to IQ development, but rather demonstrate a more general relationship between language domains and IQ.