Rakhlin Natalia V, Aljughaiman Abdullah, Grigorenko Elena L
Linguistics Program, Department of English, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Department of Special Education, King Faisal University, Hofuf, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Appl Neuropsychol Child. 2021 Jan;10(1):37-52. doi: 10.1080/21622965.2019.1596113. Epub 2019 May 10.
Arabic is characterized by extensive dialectal variation, diglossia, and substantial morphological complexity. Arabic lacks comprehensive diagnostic tools that would allow for a systematic evaluation of its development, critical for the early identification of language difficulties in the spoken and written domains. To address this gap, we have developed an assessment battery called Arabic Language: Evaluation of Function (ALEF), aimed at children aged 3 to 11 years. ALEF consists of 17 subtests indexing different language domains, modalities, and associated skills and representational systems. We administered the ALEF battery to native Gulf Arabic-speaking children ( 467; ages 2.5 to 10.92; 55% boys; 20 children in each 6-month age band) in Saudi Arabia in two data collection waves. Analyses examining the psychometric properties of the instrument indicated that after the removal of misfitting items, the ALEF subtests had reliability coefficients in the range from 0.78 to 0.98, and resulting subtest scores displayed a consistent profile of positive intercorrelations and age effects. Taken together, the results indicate that the ALEF battery has good psychometric properties, and can be used for the purpose of evaluating early language development in Gulf Arabic speaking children, pending further refinement of the test structure, examination of gender-related differential item functioning, and norming.
阿拉伯语具有广泛的方言差异、双语现象以及大量的形态复杂性。阿拉伯语缺乏全面的诊断工具，无法对其发展进行系统评估，而这对于早期识别口语和书面领域的语言困难至关重要。为了填补这一空白，我们开发了一种名为阿拉伯语：功能评估（ALEF）的评估组合，针对3至11岁的儿童。ALEF由17个分测验组成，这些分测验对不同的语言领域、模态以及相关技能和表征系统进行索引。我们在沙特阿拉伯分两波数据收集阶段，对以海湾阿拉伯语为母语的儿童（467名；年龄在2.5至10.92岁之间；55%为男孩；每个6个月年龄组有20名儿童）施测了ALEF评估组合。对该工具心理测量特性的分析表明，在去除不拟合项目后，ALEF分测验的信度系数在0.78至0.98之间，并且由此产生的分测验分数呈现出一致的正相关和年龄效应特征。综合来看，结果表明ALEF评估组合具有良好的心理测量特性，可用于评估以海湾阿拉伯语为母语儿童的早期语言发展，但有待进一步完善测试结构、检查与性别相关的项目功能差异以及进行常模制定。
