COMMUNICATIVE PARTICIPATION, TEMPERAMENT, SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL COMPETENCE AND BEHAVIOURAL DIFFICULTIES IN PRESCHOOLERS WITH ATYPICAL SPEECH-LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

· Communicative participation (CP) is a novel multidimensional construct in line with the bio-psycho-social model of health. It underlies not only functional communicative competencies (“performances”) but also formal linguistic abilities (‘capabilities’) that are known to be interrelated with certain temperamental traits and with social-emotional abilities and behavioural problems, in both typically and atypically developing children. The research aims to explore the associations between CP, temperament, and social-emotional abilities in a group of preschoolers with atypical speech-language development, given the absence of studies on this topic. In addition, the different effects that individual nonlinguistic (temperament and social-emotional skills) and linguistic factors can have on the performance component of CP will be investigated. Thirty participants were recruited according to inclusion criteria for age (between 3.6 and 6.6 years), native language (Italian), and diagnosis (Speech Sound Disorder or Developmental Language Disorder). Both direct and indirect assessments were conducted to measure CP, temperament, social-emotional abilities and behavioural problems, phonology, lexicon, and morpho-syntax. The results showed that certain temperamental traits influence the CP of children with atypical speech-language development: in fact, children with a lower social orientation and a higher inhibition to novel contexts and situations show fewer levels of CP. In addition, those with low skills in the functional use of expressive language are rated by their teachers as also having higher levels of anxiety and social withdrawal. Overall, multiple regression analysis indicated that both language skills (morpho-syntactic ability) and social orientation predict the child’s functional use of expressive language in daily life. The findings can be interpreted by considering the reciprocal influences between constitutional predispositions, children’s abilities and their functional use, and the environment.