Bilingual children who stutter: Convergence, gaps and directions for research

•The definition of bilingual is not consistent across studies.•There is no clear evidence for an increased risk of stuttering in bilinguals.•Reports of prevalence, stuttering onset age, and recovery rates across studies are inconsistent.•Findings for the effects of language proficiency, and cross-linguistic severity are ambiguous.•Similar to monolinguals, more bilingual boys than girls stutter and are less likely to recover. The aim of this systematic review is to examine the early interactions between bilingualism and stuttering to synthesize knowledge that could inform diagnosis and treatment for bilingual children who stutter. Scopus, Science Direct, PubMed, ERIC Ebsco, and Google Scholar were searched with no limits placed on the year of publication. Search terms consisted of: (“stuttering” [MeSH] OR “stutter”) AND (“child” [MeSH] OR “children”) AND (“multilingualism” [MeSH] OR “bilingualism”). Inclusion criteria were children who stutter, bilinguals who stutter, empirical research articles, and published in peer review journals. Exclusion criteria were studies that reported on only adults, only monolinguals, or were not published in English. A total of 50 articles met the criteria. There was convergence with monolingual studies reporting sexually dimorphic and familial trends in the prevalence of stuttering and rates of recovery. Findings surrounding language proficiency, cross-linguistic stuttering severity, and development were ambivalent. Results point to the difficulty in identifying stuttering in bilingual children, and the need for culturally competent research and interpretations. Current findings offer a fragmented view of bilingual development and echoes a recurring theme, i.e., the current understanding of bilingualism and stuttering is limited and more research is warranted.