Receptive Vocabulary Skills of 5- to 6-Year-Old Bangla Speaking Children with or without Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

Vocabulary is an important aspect of children’s overall language acquisition and literacy achievement. Although many children are affected by various kinds of language disorders in Bangladesh, no studies so far have been conducted to investigate children’s vocabulary skills and development. This study aims to investigate the receptive vocabulary skills of typically developing Bangla-speaking children at the age of 5 to 6 years and to compare their performance to that of children with cerebral palsy having mild language delay. The cross-sectional comparative study design was conducted to compare the receptive vocabulary skills of typically developing Bangla-speaking children and children with cerebral palsy. In total, 30 children (15 typically developing and 15 with cerebral palsy) of 5-6 years old were selected using nonrandom purposive sampling from the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed, Bangladesh. The receptive vocabulary subtest of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-III (WPPSI-III, Bangla version) scale was used for measuring children’s receptive vocabulary skills. A highly significant difference was found in receptive vocabulary skills between typically developing children and children with cerebral palsy. Moreover, there was scarcely overlap in the performance of the two groups. In general, typically developing children’s performance was higher on nouns and verbs. In contrast, there is some evidence that children with cerebral palsy outperform typically developing children on adjective and shape items.

Social Science Review, Vol. 41(2), December 2024, pp. 195-212