When Developmental Language Disorder Meets Diglossia: A Cross-Sectional Investigation of Listening Comprehension Among Native Arabic-Speaking Preschoolers.

Publisher: Springer Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 0333506 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1573-6555 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00906905 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Psycholinguist Res Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: Sept. 2004- : New York : Springer
Original Publication: New York, Plenum Press

Comprehension* ; Language Development Disorders*; Child ; Humans ; Cross-Sectional Studies ; Language ; Auditory Perception

Diglossia in the Arabic language refers to the existence of two varieties of the same language: the Spoken Arabic (SA) and the Literary Arabic (LA). This study examined the development of listening comprehension (LC) among diglossic Arabic K1-K3. For this purpose, a large sample of typically developing (TD; N = 210) and developmental language disorder children (DLD; N = 118) were examined using SA and LA texts. The analysis of variance conducted on their performance in LC revealed significant effects of K-level, group (TD vs. DLD) and text affiliation (SA vs. LA): higher scores in TD and in SA. A significant interaction between text affiliation and K-level was observed among the TD but not the DLD group. This interaction indicated that the gap in LC between the SA and LA varieties decreased with age only among TD children. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of these results are discussed.
(© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

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Keywords: Arabic diglossia; Developmental language disorder (DLD); Kindergarten; Listening comprehension; Oral language

Date Created: 20220510 Date Completed: 20221020 Latest Revision: 20221020

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