Communicative abilities in children: An assessment through different phenomena and expressive means

Abstract

Previous studies on children's pragmatic abilities have tended to focus on just one pragmatic phenomenon and one expressive means at a time, mainly concentrating on comprehension, and overlooking the production side. We assessed both comprehension and production in relation to several pragmatic phenomena (simple and complex standard communication acts, irony, and deceit) and several expressive means (linguistic, extralinguistic, paralinguistic). Our study involved 390 Italian-speaking children divided into three age groups: 5;0-5;6, 6;6-7;0, and 8;0-8;6. Children's performance on all tasks improved with their age. Within each age group, children responded more accurately to tasks involving standard communication than to those involving deceit and irony, across all expressive means and for both comprehension and production. Within each pragmatic phenomenon, children responded more accurately to simple acts than to complex ones, regardless of age group and expressive means, i.e., linguistic or extralinguistic. Overall results fit well with the Cognitive Pragmatics theory (Bara, 2010).

Understanding Contextual and Social Meaning in Typically Developing Finnish-Speaking Four- To Eight-Year-Old Children

“…Previous studies have shown that the ability to answer questions that demand complex contextual processing, such as understanding implicit meanings, develops with age (Loukusa et al, 2007;Loukusa, Ryder, & Leinonen, 2008;. At around eight years of age children begin to pay greater attention to all of the available relevant cues, including paralinguistic aspects of communication, and they no longer focus substantially on propositional content (Bosco, Angeleri, Colle, Sacco, & Bara, 2013;Morton & Trehub, 2001). An earlier study by Loukusa et al (2007) showed that at the age of seven children can connect different kinds of contextual information in order to infer the implicit meaning of an utterance.…”

“…Nevertheless, even if young children cannot yet resolve the implicit meanings of contextually complex utterances, they can utilize contextual information when identifying the object of references from the context (Bezuidenhout & Sroda, 1998;Loukusa, et al, 2007; or interpreting simple indirect utterances (Bucciarelli, Colle, & Bara, 2003). Compared to older children, the younger ones experience more challenges in understanding the intentions of utterances when there is a discrepancy between the literal meaning and the intended one as, for example, in deceitful and ironic expressions (Bosco et al, 2013;Bosco & Gabbatore, 2017a;Bucciarelli et al, 2003;Filippova & Astington, 2010;Glenwright & Pexman, 2010;Happé, 1993;Harris & Pexman, 2003;Wilson, 2013). It has been suggested that this could reflect the level of contextual complexity and inferential processes involved in different types of contextually demanding expressions (Bosco et al, 2013;Bucciarelli et al, 2003;Loukusa et al, 2007;.…”

“…Compared to older children, the younger ones experience more challenges in understanding the intentions of utterances when there is a discrepancy between the literal meaning and the intended one as, for example, in deceitful and ironic expressions (Bosco et al, 2013;Bosco & Gabbatore, 2017a;Bucciarelli et al, 2003;Filippova & Astington, 2010;Glenwright & Pexman, 2010;Happé, 1993;Harris & Pexman, 2003;Wilson, 2013). It has been suggested that this could reflect the level of contextual complexity and inferential processes involved in different types of contextually demanding expressions (Bosco et al, 2013;Bucciarelli et al, 2003;Loukusa et al, 2007;. The developmental trend shown in children's performance on different types of pragmatically challenging tasks (e.g.…”

“…The developmental trend shown in children's performance on different types of pragmatically challenging tasks (e.g. Bosco et al, 2013;Bucciarelli et al, 2003) suggests that the assessment of children's social-pragmatic performance should include questions requiring different kinds of contextual processing in order to get a holistic picture of their social-pragmatic skills.…”

“…Previous studies suggest that pragmatic abilities develop over time, and even though young children can utilize contextual information in simple familiar situations (Bezuidenhout & Sroda, 1998;, they may have difficulties with more unfamiliar and demanding tasks (Bosco et al, 2013;Bosco & Gabbatore, 2017a, 2017bBucciarelli et al, 2003;Glenwright & Pexman, 2010;Harris & Pexman, 2003;. In this study we utilized a battery of tasks called Pragma, which enables us to investigate a wide range of social-pragmatic abilities in typically developing (TD) children.…”