La répétition de phrases en vietnamien-un marqueur des troubles du langage oral et des troubles du comportement

Difficulties in correctly repeating sentences presented orally are considered as one of the most relevant markers to identify specific language impairment (SLI), particularly in Western inflecting languages. In the present study, we investigated whether a sentence repetition task in Vietnamese allows to distinguish SLI children from typically developing (TD) children (objective 1). We also wanted to verify whether this task highlighted similar profiles in children with SLI and in children with externalizing behaviour disorders (EB), which would suggests a common underlying deficit (objective 2). Finally, we investigated whether the profile of children suffering from comorbidity i.e., from both types of disorders (COM) corresponded to the addition of separate profiles (objective 3). A sentence repetition task, an immediate memory task and an auditory attention task were administrated to four groups of Vietnamese children (aged 4;6 - 7;8 years): a control group (TD) and 3 clinical groups (SLI, EB and COM). Results first demonstrated a good sensibility of the sentence repetition task in Vietnamese, a morphologically simple language, to identify difficulties in children with SLI; secondly they showed a different profile in sentence repetition, immediate memory and auditory attention in case of SLI vs. EB, suggesting that the underlying deficit is mainly different; thirdly, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of COM children's data reveal a profile that matches the addition of SLI and EB profiles. The differences highlight the need to distinguish between children presenting both types of disorders and those who only display one, both for research and clinical intervention.