DALLAS — Developmental language disorders affect millions of children nationwide, making it challenging to grasp both written and spoken language. That issue becomes more complex when it comes to children from dual-language households. Researchers at Texas Christian University are working to solve this problem by investigating how a new, AI-based technology can be used to support bilingual ...

To address the shortage of bilingual clinicians, TCU researchers are testing a program they developed, known as Computer-Assisted Bilingual Vocabulary Instruction, as a learning tool for use in school settings.

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DALLAS — Developmental language disorders affect millions of children nationwide, making it challenging to grasp both written and spoken language. That issue becomes more complex when it comes to children from dual-language households.

Researchers at Texas Christian University are working to solve this problem by investigating how a new, AI-based technology can be used to support bilingual children with developmental language disorders.

What is developmental language disorder?

Developmental language disorder affects a child's ability to learn, understand or produce spoken or written language. It is a type of neurodevelopmental disorder, meaning it is not caused by other conditions like hearing loss or neurological damage.

This disorder is estimated to affect 7% of children in the U.S. So in an average classroom of 28 children, two may have it. This makes it more prevalent than both autism spectrum disorders and dyslexia.

Bilingual children face increased challenges

The learning difficulties faced by children with developmental language disorders can compound when they come from bilingual backgrounds.

Jean Rivera Pérez, an associate professor at TCU's Davies School of Communications Sciences and Disorders, noted that in Puerto Rico, learning interventions are usually in the home language of the kids. That isn't always the case in the U.S., he said, where interventions are typically delivered in English. This means the language a child uses at home can sometimes be overlooked during clinical therapy, he said.

"If a child only receives interventions in English, they will be able to communicate with their teacher or certain members of their community, but not with their friends or their mom," Rivera Pérez said.

This can largely be attributed to a shortage of multilingual speech language pathologists in the U.S. According to a 2025 end-of-year survey by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, only about 9% of speech language pathologists in the U.S. are multilingual.

Emily Lund, a professor at the Davies School, recalled working with a Spanish-speaking boy who had been shuttled between multiple providers because none of them spoke Spanish.

"Every speech pathologist felt like they were not the best person to serve him," Lund said. "He did not have anybody who felt like they were the best person, because that person didn't exist."

Improving literacy outcomes

To address the shortage of bilingual clinicians, TCU researchers are testing a program they developed, known as Computer-Assisted Bilingual Vocabulary Instruction (CABVI), as a learning tool for use in school settings.

CABVI is designed to support language development in Latino Spanish-English bilingual children with language disorders through stories and interactive games, said Rivera Pérez, who leads the project. One of the activities features an AI-powered character, which Rivera Pérez described as a puppet, that interacts with children in both Spanish and English. When the child is speaking Spanish, the character helps facilitate communication between clinicians and children by displaying a live, written English translation.

In April, researchers published the results of a preliminary study looking at CABVI's effect on language development among 21 Spanish-speaking preschoolers. The results suggested the program improved Spanish and English vocabulary, and that students maintained this improved understanding over a 6-month period.

Researchers will begin the next phase of the project in January by conducting randomized clinical trials across school settings.

The CABVI project is supported by a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, with projected funding of $2.72 million.

Researchers aim to share their full results after five years, but interim findings looking at overall trends may come out around the halfway point, said Lund, who works on the study.

Lund hopes the research will help give monolingual clinicians more confidence when working with bilingual children, and save those children's families from hunting for a "unicorn" speech language pathologist.

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Niamh Ordner is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.