Validated screening and diagnostic tools for autism spectrum disorder for use in Arabic-speaking individuals are scarce. This study validated the Arabic version of the Social Communication Questionnaire. The total study sample included 206 children with autism spectrum disorder and 206 typically developing children (73.8% male; mean age: 8.5…

The current study mainly aims to examine the attitudes of speakers of Urban Meccan Hijazi Arabic (UMHA) towards their dialect, which is spoken in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It also investigates whether the participants' age, sex and educational level have any impact on their perception of their dialect. To this end, I designed a 5-point-Likert-scale…

This study examined two common accounts of heritage speakers' nonnative attainment in their heritage/first language (L1), one attributing it to the influence of the second language (L2) and another to insufficient L1 input. Three groups of children who were heritage speakers of Arabic and who varied in their age of L2 exposure and type and amount…

This study investigated the role of school-related variables in explaining academic proficiency (AP) performance in Hebrew (L2) and English (L3) among immigrant youth. The following sets of variables were examined: (1) school background (2) academic, linguistic and social-psychological support, and (3) professional staff and school resources…

This paper studies one ultra-Orthodox group--Habad community, exploring its members' attitudes towards four languages: Hebrew, Loshen Koydesh (LK), English, and Yiddish, and focusing on usage, affection for the language, ascribed importance, and holiness. Research questions were: (1) What are the attitudes of Habad members towards these languages?…

The study addresses the degree of transfer of literacy dimensions of academic proficiency (AP), that is, reading comprehension and writing, across three languages--Russian (L1), Hebrew (L2), and English (L3)--and investigates whether a common conceptual source underlies the linguistic and cognitive operations of the trilingual learner (Grosjean,…

Languages tend to be modified to accommodate for the speakers needs, such as, discussing or dealing with certain topics and domains. An example, university students, in Jordan, modify their own language, being colloquial Arabic, with terms and expressions from the English language in order to interact and adapt to everyday college life. Due to…

The present study evaluated the subjective happiness of Lebanese college youth using a multi-item rather than a single-item subjective happiness measure. An Arabic translation of the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) was administered to 273 Lebanese college youth from state- and private-run higher institutions of learning, as was the Arabic Adult…