The purpose of the present study was to examine the associations among teacher ratings of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptomology and executive functioning (EF) skills with reading comprehension and its underlying components reflected in the Simple View of Reading (SVR) including decoding and language comprehension ability. A total of 27 second grade (n = 10), third grade (n = 12), and fourth grade (n = 5) students were recruited for the study. Standardized assessment measures were used to capture word reading, decoding, reading comprehension, semantics, grammar, listening, phonological processing, and working memory. Teacher questionnaires were used to assess ADHD symptomology and EF ability in participants. Correlation analyses were conducted to explore the associations among teacher ratings of EF and ADHD, reading comprehension, and its subskills outlined in the SVR. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were performed to identify whether teacher ratings of ADHD or EF added unique variance to reading comprehension after controlling for word level reading and language comprehension skills. Results from the current study give further support for the SVR as an effective model for conceptualizing reading comprehension. An association between EF difficulties and poor word reading, in addition to weaker reading comprehension skills, was identified. These findings highlight the need for further research examining the role that EF plays in reading comprehension and its underlying components in order to better support struggling readers. / Graduate

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) and severe motor and speech impairments face problems in communication. Their capacities may vary across all domains of functioning, including mobility, selfcare and communication, which means these should be assessed independently, using valid and reliable instruments. The assessment of an unobservable construct like language comprehension skills is complicated because the completion of commonly available tests requires speech and motor skills. Using such tests with children with severe motor and speech impairments does not yield a valid, reliable, or representative result. To fill the gap in language assessment instruments, the Computer-Based instrument for Low motor Language Testing (C-BiLLT) was developed in the Netherlands between 2009 and 2014, and introduced intro clinical care in 2015. This test provides an accessible alternative to traditional language tests, allowing participation of children who cannot speak, finger point, or manipulate small objects. The overarching goal of the work in this thesis was to bring the C-BiLLT to Canada and to improve our understanding of the use of the C-BiLLT from a clinician and family perspective. To achieve this goal, the research described in this dissertation addressed objectives related to: 1) the cultural and linguistic adaptation of the test; 2) the psychometric properties of the new version; 3) the implementation of the test; and 4) the concept of family-centred care in relation to the C-BiLLT assessment. Three empirical studies were completed. The adaptation processes (including a validation study) that resulted in the Canadian English version of the C-BiLLT (C-BiLLT CAN) are described in Chapters 2 and 3. To understand the unique implementation attributes of the C-BiLLT, Chapter 5 describes a survey among users about their C-BiLLT use, and Chapter 6 describes an interview study in which clinician behaviours are explored into more detail. Finally, Chapter 7 describes the protocol for a qualitative study using interpretive description to understand parents’ experiences of the C-BiLLT assessment for their child with cerebral palsy and severe motor and speech impairments. The process to develop the C-BiLLT CAN comprised many phases, to ensure the linguistic and conceptual equivalence between the original C-BiLLT and the newly developed version. The benefits of a thorough cross-cultural adaptation process were confirmed by the results of the validity and reliability assessment of the C-BiLLT CAN in typically developing Canadian children. While future research is needed to confirm the feasibility and validity of the test for Canadian children with CP, our study showed that the new version is a robust instrument to assess spoken language comprehension and is available for use in clinical practice. The C-BiLLT CAN is a scientific innovation. How scientific innovations can be best implemented into clinical practice is studied by implementation science. An implementation science lens was applied to the current use of the C-BiLLT in three countries where the test is currently available in clinical practice: The Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway. The survey study described in Chapter 5 demonstrated that clinicians use the test with children with CP (the C-BiLLT’s target population), but also with children who have other diagnoses, including Down’s syndrome and autism spectrum disorder. This study also reported on the barriers and facilitators related to use of the C-BiLLT. We categorized the reported barriers and facilitators into four groups: 1) factors inherent to the C-BiLLT (i.e., its hardware, software, and content); 2) factors related to the child; 3) factors related to the clinician; and 4) factors related to the environment. To gain a better understanding of clinicians’ implementation behaviour and what is needed to facilitate behaviour change, fifteen survey respondents were interviewed individually. The COM-B model (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation – Behaviour) of behaviour change was the theoretical foundation for this study. This model describes how capability, opportunity, and motivation play a role in people’s behaviour. This study taught us how these components of behaviour interacted for clinicians who use, or attempt to use the C-BiLLT in clinical practice. The study highlights the need for support for the clinicians who use the C-BiLLT with children with severe motor and speech impairments. Compared to clinicians who use it with children with other disabilities, this group of clinicians faces more and more complex barriers. The studies described in Chapters 5 and 6 underline the importance of appropriately addressing barriers to C-BiLLT use. The growing emphasis on family-centred care in pediatric rehabilitation services inspired the conceptualization of the concluding study of this thesis, of which the protocol is described in Chapter 7. The aim of the described study is to advance Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) disciplinary knowledge around family-centred assessment for children with CP and severe motor and speech impairments. The protocol describes how we would like to address this aim by collecting parent experiences of their child’s C-BiLLT assessment. This thesis approached the C-BiLLT from the angles of cross-cultural adaptation, psychometrics, implementation, and family-centred care. The development of the C-BiLLT CAN provides the foundation for standardized and accessible assessment of spoken language comprehension for children with CP in Canada. Theory-informed knowledge translation strategies are suggested that align with real-world practice. Finally, suggestions for incorporating parents’ perspectives into the assessment process help to increase the value of the assessment for children, their families, and clinicians alike. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common cause of physical disability in children. CP is the result of an injury to the brain before, during, or after birth and before the age of one year. While effects of the brain injury are different for each child, for many children with CP the main effect is difficulty with voluntary movement, including fine movements of the lips and tongue to make speech. Some children with speech difficulties can communicate by pointing or making gestures, but others have such severe movement difficulties that they cannot make those gestures either. These children with severe difficulties might understand what others are saying, but tests of understanding usually require the child to respond with some type of movement, so those tests do not work for children with severe movement limitations. The C-BiLLT, which is short for Computer-Based instrument for Low Motor Language Testing was developed to assess language comprehension in Dutch-speaking children with CP. The child who is being tested does not need to speak or to use other fine movements to respond. Instead, the child can respond using gross motor movements on a touch screen, input switches operated with anybody part, partner-assisted scanning and/or their own access method(s). The C-BiLLT could be useful for many children with CP around the world, but at present it is only available in Dutch and Norwegian. The aim of this study was to make the C-BiLLT suitable for children in Canada. We translated the items from Dutch to English, and replaced some items of the Dutch version so that they were familiar to Canadian children. Our study told us that this new Canadian version of the test worked as well as the Dutch test. We also learned that clinicians liked the test, and used it for children with other disabilities as well. Some clinicians had difficulties using the test, and said they needed more practice. In the future we need to make sure there are opportunities for clinicians to get more training, so they have the skills to give the test to any child who would benefit. One question we still have is how families feel when their child is being tested with the C-BiLLT. Language testing should not be scary or stressful for families or children, and we need to make sure families feel comfortable with any test. Thus, as the last step of this thesis, we designed a future study to ask parents questions about their experiences. We will use results of that study to make the C-BiLLT even more child- and family-friendly.

No description available.

<p>Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used extensively in the scientific research of cognitive processing such as language comprehension. Specific responses, such as the negativity called N400 (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), have in the literature typically been associated with semantic violations in sentences. Another electrophysiological response, the positive P600 waveform, has mostly been associated with syntactic and morphological violations. However, recently, the P600 has been reported also in connection with semantic violations (Kuperberg et al, 2003; van Herten, 2004; Osterhout, 2004). The present research further explores the neurophysiological correlates of processing sentences with semantic and morpho-syntactic violations. It tests the functional interpretations of the P600 component, which has been proposed to reflect syntactic error detection, context updating, or syntactic reanalysis or repair. I contrasted semantic and syntactic possessive violations. The semantic violation conditions (i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>car’s daughter</strong> for work yesterday</em>), morphosyntactic violations (i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>daughter car</strong> for work yesterday) </em>and double violation sentences (i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>car daughter</strong> for work yesterday) </em>were derived from the control condition, (i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>daughter’s car</strong> for work yesterday). </em>I explored whether the P600 component may index more general processes than ones related to syntactic error detection. An N400 was seen to our semantic manipulation, i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>car’s daughter</strong> for work yesterday.</em> However, none of the conditions produced a P600.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

The aim of this thesis is to study the effect that linguistic context exerts on the activation and processing of word meaning over time. Previous studies have demonstrated that a biasing context makes it possible to predict upcoming words. The context causes the pre-activation of expected words and facilitates their processing when they are encountered. The interaction of context and word meaning can be described in terms of feature overlap: as the context unfolds, the semantic features of the processed words are activated and words that match those features are pre-activated and thus processed more quickly when encountered. The aim of the experiments in this thesis is to test a key prediction of this account, viz., that the facilitation effect is additive and occurs together with the unfolding context. Our first contribution is to analyse the effect of an increasing amount of biasing context on the pre-activation of the meaning of a critical word. In a self-paced reading study, we investigate the amount of biasing information required to boost word processing: at least two biasing words are required to significantly reduce the time to read the critical word. In a complementary visual world experiment we study the effect of context as it unfolds over time. We identify a ceiling effect after the first biasing word: when the expected word has been pre-activated, an increasing amount of context does not produce any additional significant facilitation effect. Our second contribution is to model the activation effect observed in the previous experiments using a bag-of-words distributional semantic model. The similarity scores generated by the model significantly correlate with the association scores produced by humans. When we use point-wise multiplication to combine contextual word vectors, the model provides a computational implementation of feature overlap theory, successfully predicting reading times. Our third contribution is to analyse the effect of context on semantically similar words. In another visual world experiment, we show that words that are semantically similar generate similar eye-movements towards a related object depicted on the screen. A coherent context pre-activates the critical word and therefore increases the expectations towards it. This experiment also tested the cognitive validity of a distributional model of semantics by using this model to generate the critical words for the experimental materials used.

Student Number: 8402734 Master of Arts (Speech Pathology) Faculty of Humanities / Comprehension was assessed under various conditions in nine subjects with probable Alzheimer’s Disease. Four linguistic variables were selected, namely syntactic complexity, the use of pronouns, directness and literality. Each variable was assessed in sentences in a simple form and in a complex form. Discourse passages which included all of the variables were then constructed, and these tasks were also administered in simple and complex forms. All subjects performed qualitatively and quantitatively better under the simple conditions than under the complex for all four of the variables assessed. However, this effect was more marked in the sentence tasks than in the discourse tasks. Furthermore, individual subjects responded differently to the manipulation of the variables. Results of the study suggest that modifying the variables investigated can improve the comprehension of people with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s Disease. This has important implications for the training of caregivers and conversational partners, and suggests that this type of indirect intervention may be an effective way for speech therapists to provide clinical services to people with dementia in South Africa.

Syftet med denna studie är att jämföra hur lärare i årskurs F–3 respektive årskurs 4–6 använder högläsning i sin undervisning. Studiens frågeställningar är: vad syftet med högläsning är i årskurs F–3 jämfört med årskurs 4–6, hur lärare i årskurs F–3 respektive årskurs 4–6 använder högläsning i sin undervisning samt om aktiviteter används i samband med högläsningen. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt är det sociokulturella perspektivet. För att få syn på deltagarnas perspektiv har halvstrukturerade intervjuer använts som datainsamlingsmetod. Det är sex verksamma lärare som intervjuats i studien. Studiens resultat visar att syftet med högläsningen är att utveckla elevers språkförståelse samt upptäcka böckernas värld. Det ges även mer utrymme åt högläsning i årskurs F–3 än årskurs 4–6. Den vanligaste aktiviteten är att samtala om och diskutera det lästa. / The purpose of this study is to compare how teachers in grades F-3 and 4–6 use reading aloud in their teaching. The following research questions have been considered: what is the purpose of reading aloud in grades F-3 compared to grades 4–6 and how teachers in grades F-3 and 4–6 respectively use reading aloud in their teaching. The study will also inquire into activities used with reading aloud. The theoretical starting point of this study is the socio-cultural perspective. In order to gain an overview of the participants' perspectives, semi-structured interviews have been used as a data collection method. There are six teachers interviewed in this study. The results of the study show that the purpose of reading aloud is to develop the pupils' language comprehension and to discover the world of books. Reading aloud is also given more space in grade F – 3 than grade 4–6. Speaking about and discussing the reading is a common activity.

<p>Denna studie undersöker om dold språkförståelse i ett andraspråk kan synliggöras vid återberättande på förstaspråket. Det kan vara svårt att skilja språkutvecklingen hos barn med typisk språkutveckling med svenska som andraspråk från språkutvecklingen hos flerspråkiga språkstörda barn om man testar dem på andraspråket. Därför behövs det referensdata för normalspråkiga barn. Sexton barn i femårsåldern med normal språkutveckling, åtta enspråkiga barn med svenska som första språk och åtta flerspråkiga barn med arabiska som första språk och svenska som andraspråk, testades med <em>Buss-sagan</em> (<em>Buss Story Test</em>, BST) och TROG (<em>Test for Reception of Grammar</em>). De flerspråkiga barnen fick sagan uppläst på svenska och återberättade först på svenska och sedan på arabiska. Resultatet i den kvantitativa analysen visade att de enspråkiga barnen fick signifikant bättre resultat för parametern information på BST och bättre resultat på TROG. Däremot skiljde sig resultatet för parametern information i berättelserna på arabiska inte signifikant från resultatet i de flerspråkiga barnens berättelser på svenska. Den kvalitativa analysen visade att de flerspråkiga barnens återberättelser på svenska och arabiska jämfört med de enspråkiga barnens framför allt lexikalt och diskursivt var mindre komplexa och korrekta. Detta kan till viss del bero på testsituationen, men också på brister i språkförståelse och uttrycksmedel. Slutsatsen man kan dra är att man som logoped behöver vara medveten om att olika språkliga strukturer utvecklas i olika takt både i första- och andraspråket, och att det behövs anpassat inflöde på alla språk för att underlätta språkförståelsen och den lexikala utvecklingen.</p> / <p>This study examines if language comprehension which may be concealed in a second language can be made visible by retelling in the first language. It can be difficult to separate the language development of typically developed children with Swedish as their second language from that of multilingual children with language impairment. Therefore, reference data for multilingual children with typical language development are needed. Sixteen five-year-old children with normal language development, eight monolingual children with Swedish as their first language and eight multilingual children with Arabic as their first language and Swedish as their second language, were tested with <em>Buss Story Test</em> (BST) and TROG (<em>Test for Reception of Grammar</em>). The multilingual children got the story of <em>Buss Story Test</em> read to them in Swedish and then retold the story first in Swedish and then in Arabic. The result of the quantitative analysis showed that monolingual children achieved significantly better results for the parameter information on BST and better results on TROG. On the other hand, the result of the parameter information in the children’s Arabic retellings did not differ significantly from that in the multilingual children’s Swedish retellings. The qualitative analysis showed that the multilingual children’s retellings in Swedish and Arabic compared with the monolingual children’s retellings were less complex and correct in regard mostly to lexical and narrative structure. This can, to a certain extent, be due to the testing situation, but also due to deficiencies in language comprehension and means of expression. The authors conclude that speech therapists need to be aware of the fact that different linguistic structures develop at a different rate both in the first and the second language, and that tailored input in all the children’s languages is needed in order to facilitate comprehension and lexical development.</p>

Sprachverständnisuntersuchungen sind sowohl für die Forschung zum Spracherwerb und zu dessen Störungen als auch für die Diagnostik in der klinischen Praxis von essentieller Bedeutung. Zwei der verbreitetesten Methoden zur Erfassung des Verständnisses von syntaktischen Strukturen sind das Ausagieren von Sätzen (AS) und die Satz-Bild-Zuordnung (SBZ). Beide Methoden sind mit unterschiedlichen Anforderungen an die Probanden sowie mit spezifischen Vor- und Nachteilen verbunden (vgl. z.B. Goodluck 1996, Gerken & Shady 1996), woraus sich die Frage ergibt, inwiefern die Wahl der Methode das Testergebnis und die damit verbundenen Schlussfolgerungen beeinflusst. In der hier beschriebenen empirischen Untersuchung wurden die AS- und die SBZ-Methode anhand des Verstehens semantisch reversibler Sätze mit Objektvoranstellung direkt miteinander verglichen: Jeweils 24 monolingual mit Deutsch als Muttersprache aufwachsenden, sprachunauffälligen Kindern im Alter von 3;0 bis 3;5 bzw. 5;0 bis 5;5 Jahren wurden insgesamt zwölf Items, von denen neun aus semantisch reversiblen Sätzen mit Objektvoranstellung und drei aus entsprechenden subjektinitialen Kontrastsätzen bestanden, sowohl mittels der AS-Methode als auch mittels der SBZ-Methode präsentiert. Zum Ausagieren der Testsätze (AS-Test) wurden Spielzeugfiguren verwendet, für die Satz-Bild-Zuordnung (SBZ-Test) wurden pro Item ein Ziel- und zwei Ablenkerbilder erstellt. Die kindlichen Reaktionen wurden nach syntaktischen Kriterien als korrekt bzw. inkorrekt bewertet, Abweichungen wurden hinsichtlich der Fehlerart klassifiziert. Zusätzlich wurde bei den einzelnen Kindern der Erwerbsstand der untersuchten Struktur beurteilt und es wurden, sofern möglich, die eingesetzten Sprachverständnisstrategien ermittelt. Der Vergleich der Methoden ergab für die einzelnen Altersgruppen sehr unterschiedliche Befunde: Bei den 3;0- bis 3;5-jährigen Kindern zeigten sich im SBZ-Test teilweise starke Rateeffekte, die zu verfälschten Ergebnissen und kaum interpretierbaren Reaktionsmustern führten, während dies im AS-Test nicht der Fall war. Für diese Altersgruppe ist demnach die AS-Methode als die geeignetere anzusehen. Bei den 5;0- bis 5;5-jährigen Kindern konnte indes keine derartige Diskrepanz zwischen den beiden Tests festgestellt werden. Vielmehr waren die Leistungen hier insgesamt vergleichbar, so dass für diese Altersgruppe die AS- und die SBZ-Methode als für die Untersuchung des Syntaxverständnisses gleichwertig gelten können. Darüber hinaus bestätigte die Untersuchung viele der in der Literatur beschriebenen Vor- und Nachteile der beiden Methoden, darunter der geringere Materialbeschaffungsaufwand bei der AS-Methode, die größere Durchführungspraktikabilität der SBZ-Methode, die höhere Attraktivität und das geringere Risiko für Antwort-biases bei der AS-Methode, die leichtere Bewertbarkeit der kindlichen Reaktionen bei der SBZ-Methode. Im Vergleich der Altersgruppen zeigte sich, dass die 5;0- bis 5;5-jährigen Kinder Testsätze mit Objektvoranstellung deutlich besser verstanden als die 3;0- bis 3;5-jährigen: Die meisten der jüngeren Kinder hatten die untersuchte Struktur offenbar noch nicht erworben – sie interpretierten die Sätze mit Objektvoranstellung stattdessen am häufigsten nach der Wortreihenfolgestrategie, verstanden sie also wie subjektinitiale Strukturen. Von den 5;0- bis 5;5-jährigen Kindern dagegen hatten 75% die untersuchte Struktur rezeptiv erworben, interpretierten die Testsätze also primär korrekt nach der grammatischen Strategie. Aus diesen Ergebnissen wurde geschlossen, dass die Struktur semantisch reversibler Sätze mit Objektvoranstellung frühestens ab einem Alter von 5;0 bis 5;5 Jahren als in der ungestörten Sprachentwicklung rezeptiv erworben gelten kann. Da sich jedoch in beiden Altersgruppen trotz allem eine erhebliche interindividuelle Variation hinsichtlich der Verständnisfähigkeiten zeigte, muss insgesamt von einem relativ langen Zeitfenster für den ungestörten Erwerb dieser Struktur ausgegangen werden. / The assessment of children’s receptive language abilities plays an essential part in both experimental research on language acquisition and clinical diagnostics of language acquisition impairments. Two of the most prevalent methods especially used for assessing syntax comprehension are act-out and picture selection. The two methods do not only differ in their requirements on the proband/patient, but also have specific advantages and disadvantages concerning the development, administration, and interpretation of experimental or diagnostic tests (cf. Goodluck 1996, Gerken & Shady 1996). This leads to the question of how far the adopted method influences the result of the test and the conclusions drawn from it. In the study reported here, act-out and picture selection were, by means of a comprehension task using semantically reversible sentences with object fronting, directly compared to each other. Subjects were 48 German-speaking children with normal language development: 24 aged 3;0 to 3;5 years and another 24 aged 5;0 to 5;5 years. The children were presented with twelve stimuli, nine consisting of semantically reversible sentences with object fronting and three of correspondent subject initial constructions, using both an act-out procedure with toy props and a picture selection procedure with three choices per sentence. The child’s responses were scored correct or incorrect according to syntactic criteria, with incorrect responses categorised by type. In addition, the child’s level of acquisition of the structure in focus and, when possible, the comprehension strategies used by the child were determined. The comparison of the two methods yielded very different results for the individual age groups: A considerable proportion of the 3;0 to 3;5-year-olds displayed strong effects of guessing with the picture selection procedure, which led to inaccurate results and response patterns that were hardly interpretable, whereas this was not the case with the act-out procedure. According to these findings then, act-out is to be considered the more suitable method for children of this age. However with the 5;0 to 5;5-year-olds, no such discrepancy between the two methods was found, their results in both tests being comparable. Thus, for children aged five years or older, picture selection and act-out can be regarded as equivalent methods for the assessment of syntax comprehension. In addition to these findings, many of the advantages and disadvantages of the two methods described in the literature were confirmed in the study, such as the lower material provision costs with the act-out procedure, the higher administration practicability of the picture selection method, the greater appeal for children and the lower risk for response-biases with act-out tasks, and with picture selection, the easier scoring of the child’s responses . Comparing the two age groups, the 5;0 to 5;5-year-olds showed considerably better comprehension of the semantically reversible sentences with object fronting than the 3;0 to 3;5-year-olds: The majority of the younger children obviously had not yet acquired the structure in question and instead, mostly relying on the so called word order strategy, misinterpreted the sentences with object fronting as subject-initial structures. In contrast, 75% of the older children had receptively acquired the syntax of object fronting, since they interpreted most of the test sentences correctly according to a grammatical strategy. From these results, it was concluded that the structure of semantically reversible sentences with object fronting can be regarded as receptively acquired in normal language development at the earliest at age 5;0 to 5;5 years. However, since there was considerable interindividual variation in the comprehension abilities in both age groups, the time frame for the acquisition of this structure must be assumed to be relatively large.

Denna studie undersöker om dold språkförståelse i ett andraspråk kan synliggöras vid återberättande på förstaspråket. Det kan vara svårt att skilja språkutvecklingen hos barn med typisk språkutveckling med svenska som andraspråk från språkutvecklingen hos flerspråkiga språkstörda barn om man testar dem på andraspråket. Därför behövs det referensdata för normalspråkiga barn. Sexton barn i femårsåldern med normal språkutveckling, åtta enspråkiga barn med svenska som första språk och åtta flerspråkiga barn med arabiska som första språk och svenska som andraspråk, testades med Buss-sagan (Buss Story Test, BST) och TROG (Test for Reception of Grammar). De flerspråkiga barnen fick sagan uppläst på svenska och återberättade först på svenska och sedan på arabiska. Resultatet i den kvantitativa analysen visade att de enspråkiga barnen fick signifikant bättre resultat för parametern information på BST och bättre resultat på TROG. Däremot skiljde sig resultatet för parametern information i berättelserna på arabiska inte signifikant från resultatet i de flerspråkiga barnens berättelser på svenska. Den kvalitativa analysen visade att de flerspråkiga barnens återberättelser på svenska och arabiska jämfört med de enspråkiga barnens framför allt lexikalt och diskursivt var mindre komplexa och korrekta. Detta kan till viss del bero på testsituationen, men också på brister i språkförståelse och uttrycksmedel. Slutsatsen man kan dra är att man som logoped behöver vara medveten om att olika språkliga strukturer utvecklas i olika takt både i första- och andraspråket, och att det behövs anpassat inflöde på alla språk för att underlätta språkförståelsen och den lexikala utvecklingen. / This study examines if language comprehension which may be concealed in a second language can be made visible by retelling in the first language. It can be difficult to separate the language development of typically developed children with Swedish as their second language from that of multilingual children with language impairment. Therefore, reference data for multilingual children with typical language development are needed. Sixteen five-year-old children with normal language development, eight monolingual children with Swedish as their first language and eight multilingual children with Arabic as their first language and Swedish as their second language, were tested with Buss Story Test (BST) and TROG (Test for Reception of Grammar). The multilingual children got the story of Buss Story Test read to them in Swedish and then retold the story first in Swedish and then in Arabic. The result of the quantitative analysis showed that monolingual children achieved significantly better results for the parameter information on BST and better results on TROG. On the other hand, the result of the parameter information in the children’s Arabic retellings did not differ significantly from that in the multilingual children’s Swedish retellings. The qualitative analysis showed that the multilingual children’s retellings in Swedish and Arabic compared with the monolingual children’s retellings were less complex and correct in regard mostly to lexical and narrative structure. This can, to a certain extent, be due to the testing situation, but also due to deficiencies in language comprehension and means of expression. The authors conclude that speech therapists need to be aware of the fact that different linguistic structures develop at a different rate both in the first and the second language, and that tailored input in all the children’s languages is needed in order to facilitate comprehension and lexical development.