Träning av lexikal förmåga hos ett svensk-arabisktalande förskolebarn : Utredning och intensiv intervention av det svenska ordförrådet

Sammanfattning: Sweden has a growing proportion of children living in a multilingual environment. It is thus highly important that caretakers as well as professionals who meet these children have knowledge of multilingualism and its impact on language development. Also, an increase of referrals of multilingual children with suspected language impairment to speech and language pathology clinics is seen. The objective of this study was to investigate the linguistic ability in both Swedish and Arabic in a four year old child with suspected language impairment. A further aim was to implement an intensive intervention and evaluate the efficacy of it. Language testing in both languages showed that the boy’s greatest need was in the lexical domain. Thus, the intervention focused on strengthening the vocabulary within a limited number of categories. The study was performed with a single-subject design with multiple baseline assessments before intervention and efficacy measurement after the intervention. These were made with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III and the Boston Naming Test and both in Arabic and Swedish. The intervention was made in Swedish. After the intervention a significant increase in both passive and active Swedish vocabulary was seen. No transfer effect to the non-trained language was noted.