Despite the increasing amount of bi- and multilingual clients in the caseloads of speech and language therapists, there is a limited number of instruments that clinicians can use to distinguish transient language difference, due to a...
moreDespite the increasing amount of bi- and multilingual clients in the caseloads of speech and language therapists, there is a limited number of instruments that clinicians can use to distinguish transient language difference, due to a bilingual environment, from language disorder. In the current study, the Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers’ Proficiency in Learning English (DAPPLE, Hasson et al., 2013) was therefore adapted to Italian and administered to 18 bilingual children who had been referred to speech and language therapy services and to 29 typically developing bilingual controls. The two groups were matched on age, exposure to Italian, age of first exposure to Italian, primary caregiver education and non-verbal IQ. The ability to learn vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology was assessed through the use of a test-teach-retest format, and subsequently compared to the results of a non-word repetition task and a parent report on the child’s first language development. Overall, the Italian adaptation of the DAPPLE was found to discriminate the two groups of children. In the vocabulary subtest, statistically significant between-group differences were found on the receptive pre-test and on the immediate post-teaching naming task. Pre-test and post-test measures, as well as the children’s pre- to post-gains, differentiated the two groups in both the sentence structure and phonology tasks. Finally, significant inter-correlations were observed among the scores derived from the dynamic assessment, the results of the non-word repetition task and the parent report, which seemingly confirmed the pre-diagnostic accuracy of the proposed screening tool.
