The Italian metalinguistic ability tests TAM-2 and TAM-3 (Pinto & Titone 1989 ; Pinto 1995, 1999) and their use in research: an overview

This article describes two metalinguistic ability tests, the TAM-2 and the TAM-3 (Pinto & Titone 1989 ; Pinto 1995, 1999), which address two different age ranges, 9-14 and late adolescenceadulthood, respectively. In both tests, there is a clear distinction between L questions, which elicit an intuitive and global form of metalinguistic awareness (henceforth, MLA), and ML questions, which request justification of the previous L questions, and thus elicit MLA at the explicit level. To assess these more complex ML processes, a three-step scale has been created, based on Piaget’s final equilibration model (Piaget, 1975) which posits three types of mental regulations to face cognitive conflicts : alpha, beta, and gamma. As metalinguistic tasks are intrinsically generated by cognitive conflicts between linguistic elements of different nature (in form and in meaning), the alpha, beta, and gamma pattern has been transposed to the metalinguistic domain. This coding system ensures continuity between the TAM-2 and the TAM-3, beyond differences in metalinguistic complexity. This article also offers an overview of the extensive research that has been conducted with the TAM-2 and the TAM-3, not only in their original linguistic version, i.e. Italian, but in all the other linguistic versions available (English, French, Spanish, and German).