Measuring Pragmatic Language in Children with Developmental Dysphasia: Comparing Results of Arabic Versions of TOPL-2 and CELF-4 (PP and ORS Subtests)

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to compare the results of the Arabic TOPL-2 as a psycholinguistic-marker that measures the ability of individuals with developmental dysphasia DD and the results of both the Pragmatics Profile PP and Observational Rating Scale ORS subtests from CELF-4.
The method was that twenty-seven children and adolescents (F: 13, M: 14) diagnosed with delay language disorder DLD (n: 14), SLI (n: 7), language delay LD (n: 3), hearing impairment HI (n: 2) and mental retardation MR (n: 1) and who were (6-14) years old completed the two tests mentioned above.
The results indicated that while the Arabic TOPL-2 identified 24 of the 27 children and adolescents with developmental dysphasia as pragmatically impaired, the Arabic CELF-4 identified only 22 in the PP and 13 in the ORS.
It was concluded that a significant strength of the TOPL-2 was its measurability compared to the inclusiveness characteristic of CELF-4 subtests. Moreover, the formal battery emphasizes linguistic pragmatics more strongly than the informal battery, which includes linguistic and nonlinguistic pragmatics.