Adult's knowledge of typical and atypical language development

Mothers' knowledge of child development has been investigated intensively, while knowledge of the specific phenomenon of language development - typical and atypical- has been relatively overlooked. This work aims at understanding which information lay people hold about developmental language disorders, which might aid their recognition, management or prevention. Thirty-six parents and 30, non-parents Italian adults, were administered a semi-structured interview with open questions and probes, regarding typical development, atypical development and dyslexia. Answers were coded with respect to behaviour indexes, causes and possible treatments in typical or atypical language acquisition. Results suggests that people's knowledge of the main steps of language acquisition may reveal somewhat inadequate to early refer communication disorders (the milestone of words combination is almost not cited). Indeed, some adults pay attention to articulation difficulties (54 %), rarely mention poor vocabulary (20 %), or persistent grammatical difficulties (15 %); only 12 % of them can properly define dyslexia. As misconceptions about risk factors for language disorders and poor knowledge of professional intervention were common in parents and non-parents, the opportunity to disseminate scientific information about language development is discussed. After a campaign was run in the UK (ICan-2007), cultural differences with the Italian context could deserve further investigation.