Your child will be invited to take part in two individual sessions, where s/he will be seen by the research assistants during school hours on school premises in a quiet room accessible to school staff and parents at all times.
In the first session the researcher will take some basic measures of language comprehension and production using two standardized tests designed to assess children’s linguistic skills. Additionally your child will take part in two tasks, designed as games, that will measure cognitive and linguistic abilities. In the cognitive task your child will see shapes on a computer screen and s/he needs to press either the left or right button, depending on the location of the shapes. In the linguistic task, the child will give instructions to the experimenter, based on pictures s/he sees on a computer screen. This latter task will be audio-recorded to allow the researcher to provide an accurate transcription of your child’s language production.
In the second session the child will take part in two cognitive tasks and one linguistic task, again all designed as games. The two cognitive tasks include a memory task in which the child has to point at frogs on a computer screen, and a flexibility task in which the child will be asked to sort cards by either colour or form. The linguistic task will be conducted in the same way as in the previous session and this task will also be audio-recorded to allow the researcher to provide an accurate transcription of your child’s language production.
Each session will have an approximate time duration of 1 hour. Children will be allowed to take breaks to minimise fatigue and maximise focus on the tasks at hand. Usually, children enjoy taking part in these kinds of tasks.
