Abstract

Foreign pupils in Italy represent 9.2% of the total. Many of them manifest learning disorders in addition to linguistic, socio-cultural and adaptive difficulties. This study involves migrant families with children affected by Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD); the main goal is to examine the correlation between acculturation strategies, socio-cultural integration, reading and cognitive skills. The results show that: a) there is a positive correlation between the parent’s linguistic and cultural integration and the child’s verbal comprehension; b) the child’s socio-cultural integration – child’s participation in community life and his/her educational and linguistic integration – is connected to some of his/her skills; c) depending on the acculturation strategy chosen, children whose parents prefer Integration make fewer reading mistakes compared with children whose parents adopt Individualism. In conclusion, the results suggest the existence of a relation between the level of socio-cultural integration of migrant families and some cognitive and linguistic skills of the children with SLD.