In a study in schools in Hackney, London, 22 native Turkish-speaking four- and five-year-olds were assessed for emotion-recognition and empathy by playing the Happy Cats computer game, developed by Screen Learningto support teachers with Foundation Stage Profile assessments.
Each child was randomly assigned to play the game first in Turkish or English, or vice-versa, to ensure the order the tests were played in did not influence the results.
Changing the game's language from Turkish to English lowered a child's score by 20 percentage points on average.
Dr Ian Walker, a cognitive psychologist at Screen Learning who devised the study, said, 'Children do quite strikingly better when they play the game in their native language. They are at a disadvantage when they are tested in English. It is fairly clear that in non-language tests this is not an accurate measure of their abilities.'
He added, 'With something like ability to recognise emotions or counting there is the potential for children to be scored poorly because they do not understand the instructions properly.'
At Whitmore Primary School in Hackney, six Turkish children were assessed using the Happy Cats game. Although one child scored exactly the same in both languages and one did better in English, the other four's scores were significantly better when tested in Turkish.
One boy's score jumped from only 16 per cent when he played the game in English to 75 per cent when he played in Turkish.
Margaret Taylor, ethnic minority achievement co-ordinator, said the games could also be particularly valuable for assessing numeracy and they gave an insight into why some young Turkish children appear to be underachieving.
'Children may have a high level of understanding in numeracy but they could be prevented from showing that by not understanding the language,' she said.
All reception class children are to be tested using the games during the next month and assessed at the end of the school year.
Screen Learning has created 13 computer assessment games to support teachers with Foundation Stage profile assessments.
