Assessing early sociocognitive and language skills in young Saudi children
type: CreativeWork
description: Children with early language delay form a heterogeneous group. Although a significant number will catch up and develop language in the normal range, some will continue to have difficulties with language. Predicting the outcome for these children represents a challenging task for clinicians. It has been suggested that the assessment of sociocognitive skills contributes distinctively to the prediction of persistence of language and communication difficulties and the nature of these difficulties. In the absence of standardized assessments in Saudi Arabia for children with early language delay, this study aimed to take a first step to filling this gap by developing a battery of early sociocognitive and language measures. The battery consisted of six measures assessing sociocognitive and language skills using direct and indirect methods, some existing and some newly developed or adapted for this project. Sociocognitive measures were the Early Sociocognitive Battery (ESB; Chiat & Roy, 2006b), together with a new Motor Imitation test (MI) and Sociocognitive Questionnaire (SCogQ); language measures included the Sentence Repetition test (Wallan, Chiat, & Roy, 2011), a new Arabic research adaptation of the Language Use Inventory (O’Neill, 2009), and a preschool adapted version of the Arabic Picture Vocabulary Test (Shaalan, 2010). Since this project was performed in a very different language culture and included a wider range of sociocognitive and language measures than most previous studies, a second aim was to investigate relations between the different sociocognitive and language skills. The battery was administered to 161 Saudi children between the ages of 2;0-3;5 years, divided into three six-months age groups and almost equally divided into boys and girls. Addressing the first aim of this study, results showed that all the measures with the exception of the SCogQ were reliable, valid, and age sensitive. These findings suggest that the measures are fit for purpose and ha…
abstract: Children with early language delay form a heterogeneous group. Although a significant number will catch up and develop language in the normal range, some will continue to have difficulties with language. Predicting the outcome for these children represents a challenging task for clinicians. It has been suggested that the assessment of sociocognitive skills contributes distinctively to the prediction of persistence of language and communication difficulties and the nature of these difficulties. In the absence of standardized assessments in Saudi Arabia for children with early language delay, this study aimed to take a first step to filling this gap by developing a battery of early sociocognitive and language measures. The battery consisted of six measures assessing sociocognitive and language skills using direct and indirect methods, some existing and some newly developed or adapted for this project. Sociocognitive measures were the Early Sociocognitive Battery (ESB; Chiat & Roy, 2006b), together with a new Motor Imitation test (MI) and Sociocognitive Questionnaire (SCogQ); language measures included the Sentence Repetition test (Wallan, Chiat, & Roy, 2011), a new Arabic research adaptation of the Language Use Inventory (O’Neill, 2009), and a preschool adapted version of the Arabic Picture Vocabulary Test (Shaalan, 2010). Since this project was performed in a very different language culture and included a wider range of sociocognitive and language measures than most previous studies, a second aim was to investigate relations between the different sociocognitive and language skills. The battery was administered to 161 Saudi children between the ages of 2;0-3;5 years, divided into three six-months age groups and almost equally divided into boys and girls. Addressing the first aim of this study, results showed that all the measures with the exception of the SCogQ were reliable, valid, and age sensitive. These findings suggest that the measures are fit for purpose and ha…
author: AlKadhi, Aseel
keywords: HM Sociology, P Philology. Linguistics
date published: 2015
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:39:24Z
provider: City University of London
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: City University London