Background and Aim: Bilingualism, as one of the discussing issues of psychology and linguistics, can influence the speech processing. Of several tests for assessing auditory processing, dichotic digit test has been designed to study divided auditory attention. Our study was performed to compare the auditory attention between Iranian bilingual and monolingual young adults.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 60 students including 30 Turkish-Persian bilinguals and 30 Persian monolinguals aged between 18 to 30 years in both genders. Dichotic digit test was performed on young individuals with normal peripheral hearing and right hand preference.

Results: No significant correlation was found between the results of dichotic digit test of monolinguals and bilinguals (p=0.195), and also between the results of right and left ears in monolingual (p=0.460) and bilingual (p=0.054) groups. The mean score of women was significantly more than men (p=0.031).

Conclusion: There was no significant difference between bilinguals and monolinguals in divided auditory attention and it seems that acquisition of second language in lower ages has no noticeable effect on this type of auditory attention.

Background and Aim: Most of the researches are about bilingual children with specific language impairment and importance of it in recognition and treatment. This study aimed to assess verb morphology in bilinguals with specific language impairment (SLI) and compare them with normal bilinguals.

Methods: Six bilingual (Azeri and Persian) children with specific language impairment at the age of 7-8 years were collected from clinics of Tehran, Iran. They were evaluated about verb morphology using narrative speech and specific language impairment test and then, compared with six age-matched and six other language-matched children as control group. Children with specific language impairment were diagnosed by exhibiting a significant delay (more than one year) in language that can not be explained by intelligence deficits, hearing loss or visual impairment. We used Man-Whitney test for comparing the groups.

Results: Bilingual children with specific language impairment had delay in comparison with their age-matched group in subject-verb agreement (p=0.020) and articulating tense morphemes (p=0.019). They also had meaningful delay in using proper tense of verbs (past, present, and future) in comparison with language-matched control group (p=0.029).

Conclusion: Comparison of typical development of bilingual children and bilinguals with specific language impairment shows that verb morphology is a good clinical marker for diagnosing and treatment of these children.