Lexical development in Kuwaiti Arabic in typically developing children and late talkers.

INTRODUCTION: This study explored vocabulary development and lexical composition in young typically developing (TD) Kuwaiti children and late talkers (LT) using the Kuwaiti Arabic Communicative Development Inventory-Words and Sentences (KACDI-WS) Abdalla et al., 2016). The sample included 161 children aged 20 to 37 months: 127 TD and 34 children who were late talkers (LT group). The late talkers were first identified based on a background questionnaire answered by the parents. All the caregivers completed a 698-item web-based KACDI expressive vocabulary inventory by selecting non-imitative words that their children produced. RESULTS: Lexical size and composition (nouns, predicates, and closed-class words) were analyzed. Across the TD age groups (20-26, 27-31, 32-37 months), a significant age effect for vocabulary size and composition was found in favor of the older groups. Nouns were more prevalent than predicates or closed-class words in within-group comparisons. The vocabulary size of the TD (M= 263.8) was significantly larger than that of the LT group (M= 69.2). The development of their lexical composition followed a similar pattern. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggested that the KACDI parent report instrument has the potential for measuring vocabulary development in TD children and could serve as an initial screening tool to identify late talkers.

Structural Development of Narratives in Arabic: Task Complexity, Age, and Cultural Factors.

Purpose This study examines the effect of age and task complexity on the macrostructure of story production in preschool- and school-age Kuwaiti Arabic-speaking children. It also compares the children's production of core and complementary macrostructure story elements. Method A descriptive, cross-sectional research design was used to explore the participants' narrative skills. A total of 122 monolingual speakers of Kuwaiti Arabic (97 children and 25 adults) participated in this study. The children aged 4;0 to 7;11 (years;months) were randomly recruited from public schools across Kuwait. There were 24 four-year-olds (Kindergarten 1), 23 five-year-olds (Kindergarten 2), 23 six-year-olds (Grade 1), and 27 seven-year-olds (Grade 2). A group of adults was also included to establish a benchmark. Storytelling was elicited from all the participants using two sets of sequential pictures from the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument: a one-episode story and a more complex three-episode story (Schneider et al., 2005). Across-group comparisons were conducted to explore the effect of age, story complexity, and type of macrostructure elements on story production. Results The findings revealed a progression by age in the development of story macrostructure, but there was no effect of task complexity. Within all age groups, the core macrostructure components were mastered before the complementary elements. Conclusions The results of this study confirmed that cross-linguistic narrative measures could be used in contexts that are culturally and linguistically different with minor adaptations. The piloting of two picture-based stories showed that the shorter one-episode version may be sufficient to evaluate the language development of this age group.