Estimating the Pragmatic Language Abilities in Indian Adolescents between 10 and 16 Years of Age: Using Contextually Flooded Visual Scenes

Perspectives of Indian speech language pathologists towards assessing adolescents with language impairments

“…The SLPs in the current study indicated the development of language to terminate either during childhood, adulthood, or later adulthood. Findings of studies on language development reveal language development to be an ongoing process that may actually never end (7)(8)(9)18) , which was also reported by a small proportion (24%) of participants in the current study. Contrastively, other research states language acquisition to begin during infancy, peaking during childhood, where there is maximum development of language due to supporting biological factors, and ending well before adolescence (19) .…”

“…Contrastively, New Zealand uses terms such as ‘youth’ and ‘adolescence’ synonymously, referring to ‘young people’ ranging between 10 and 24 years of age. Various researchers have studied adolescents who were considered to be aged between 10 and 24 years ( 16 ) , 13 and 19 years ( 17 ) , and 10 and 16 years ( 7 , 9 , 18 ) . Such a blend of use of adolescent periods does imply that it is conveniently decided and followed upon, with the precise onset and offset being difficult to be determined ( 1 ) , with no uniform pattern being recorded.…”

“…Tool-related factors included the lack of awareness of existing tools ( 28 ) , and the lack of availability of linguistically and culturally standardized adolescent language assessment tools (both western and Indian), both of which being under-addressed dilemmas. Although attempts are underway to study the assessment of language in Indian adolescents ( 7 - 9 , 18 ) using formal and informal methods, the participants report such tools being too complex and time-consuming. Apart from this, certain client-related factors included the patient’s reluctance to talk, shyness, improper furnishing of details by the family/self, and the patient’s inability to comprehend instructions.…”

Determining Language Production Abilities in Indian Adolescents between 10 and 16 Years of Age: Using a Conversational based Task

“…The post hoc results of the current study did indicate a significant difference only between the 14 and 15-year-olds and not the other pairs. Such variations observed in QU can be attributed to the developmental trend seen in adolescents; where in most of the development in language is perceived as subtle, and therefore could be observed only when considering the age groups in clusters (Karuppali & Bhat, 2013, 2014Nippold, 2006;Vaz & Karuppali, 2019). In this line, the QU was also analysed using 3 cluster groups (10 and 11-year-olds; 12 and 13-year-olds; and 14 and 15-yearolds).…”

“…Language sampling are often performed using naturalistic tasks which helps frame realistic interventional targets (Paul & Norbury, 2012). In view of the importance of language production abilities in adolescent years, researchers have attempted to study and profile these abilities using narration (Staikova, Gomes, Tartter, McCabe, & Halperin, 2013), discourse (De Marchena & Eigsti, 2016) and visual scene based interpretation (Vaz & Karuppali, 2019). However, there are only a handful of studies that have assessed language production abilities in adolescents using a conversational based task that takes into account the interaction between a speaker and a listener, or more communication partners, with each one having their own contributions towards the conversation either directly or indirectly (Hoey, 1983).…”