Assessing Language Pragmatics: Who, What and *How

Assessing Language Pragmatics:
Who, What and How
Peter A. de Villiers
Jill G. de Villiers
Smith College
*supported by NIH grant N01-DC-8-2104
to the University of Massachusetts and Smith College
*webpage:
www.umass.edu/aae
Pragmatics
• The functional use of language between speaker(s)
and listener(s) for effective communication.
• Syntax and semantics are always intertwined with
their functional use in communication so cannot be
totally separated from pragmatics skills in
language acquisition.
• Looking at the development or impairment of
“communicative competence” (Hymes, 1972).
• We will focus on pragmatic language (not gesture
or other non-verbal communication) between the
ages of 3 and 9.
Who needs to be assessed?
• Some children show differential impairment of the
functional and social-interactional components of
language
– Children with autistic spectrum disorders
– Children with Asperger syndrome
– Children with specific Pragmatic Language Impairment
(Bishop, 1998)
• But most children with substantial language
impairment will also show pragmatic problems
– Especially if they have both receptive and expressive
language impairment (Craig & Evans, 1993)
What to assess?
Five Components of Pragmatics
1. Conversational skills in social interaction
2. Speech Acts -- doing things with words
and utterances
3. Reference and Presuppositions
taking into account the perspective or
knowledge state of the listener
4. Extended discourse genres:
e.g., Narrative, Exposition
5. Styles or “registers”of speaking
1. Conversational Skills
• Turn taking
– Sensitivity to non-linguistic,
paralinguistic, and linguistic cues
• Topics
– Initiation
– Maintenance
– Elaboration
– Ending
– Change
Grice’s Conversational Maxims Cooperative Principles
• Sincerity
– Assumption that speaker means what she says
• Relevance
– Keeping on topic
• Quantity
– Providing enough but not too much redundant
information for the listener
2. Speech Acts
• Doing things with words and utterances
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Informing or reporting
Requesting information
Requesting action (indirect questions)
Commanding or demanding
Denying statements
Rejecting or prohibiting actions
Greetings
3. Referential Specificity, Continuity,
and Presuppositions
• Assessing what your listener knows or needs
to know
– Shared information from the referential context
or world knowledge
– Shared information already introduced into the
discourse
• Coherence and Cohesion in discourse
– Linking utterances together thematically,
temporally and referentially
Conversational Breakdowns and Repairs
• Detecting communication breakdown and its
source
• Contingent queries and requests for
clarification
• Spontaneous and prompted repairs
–
–
–
–
Repetition
Further specification
Elaboration
Confirmation
4. Extended Discourse Genres Narratives
• Coherence in narratives
– Plot and episode structure
– Story grammars
• Cohesion in narratives
– Reference
• Introducing, maintaining, and specifying characters
– Linking events
• Causal links
• Temporal links
• Mental states and the “Landscape of
Consciousness” (Bruner, 1986)
5. Speaking with Style Speech Registers
• Tailoring one’s speech to the audience and
social situation e.g. politeness, baby talk etc.
–
–
–
–
Age of listener
Social status of listener
Formality of the situation
Cultural expectations
How to Assess
Some existing procedures
How to assess
1. Conversational Skills
a) Language sampling
–
–
–
–
Closer to authentic communication
But needs to be structured to get some features
Time consuming and labor intensive
Often lack measures of reliability, validity, and norms
b) Conversational Analysis
– (Craig & Evans, 1993)
c) Pragmatic Profiles
– (Prutting & Kirchner, 1987).
d) Checklists by teachers, clinicians, or parents
– Children’s Communication Checklist (Bishop, 1998).
b) Conversational Analysis
• Craig & Evans (1993)
– Analyzed children’s adjacent responses to adult
utterances as contingent vs noncontingent
– Cohesion ties with prior adult utterance as complete vs
incomplete.
– Complete ties of various sorts (e.g., lexical, referential
(e.g. pronouns), ellipsis, connectives)
• SLI children with receptive as well as expressive
problems were:
– Lacking in strategies for conversational interruption and
access
– Made fewer connective ties to previous adult utterance
– Made more incomplete ties to adult’s utterances
c) Pragmatic Profile
(Prutting & Kirchner, 1987)
• Age 5 and up.
• Based on 15 minute spontaneous, unstructured conversation sample
with a familiar partner.
• 30 pragmatic features rated as appropriate (facilitate or neutral with
respect to communication) or inappropriate (get in the way of
communicative exchange) [or no opportunity to observe]
• 18 Verbal aspects of communication:
– Speech acts (pairs and variety)
– Topic (selection, introduction, maintenance, change)
– Turn taking (initiation, response, repair, adjacency, contingency,
quantity)
– Lexical selection (specificity/accuracy, cohesion)
– Stylistic variation
• 5 Paralinguistic aspects (intelligibility and prosodics)
• 7 Nonverbal aspects (e.g, physical proximity, gestures, eyegaze)
Pragmatic Profile
(Prutting & Kirchner, 1987)
• Compared 42 typically developing with 42 language
disordered and 42 articulation disordered children
between the ages of 7 and 10.
• Language disordered children were most likely to be
flagged as inappropriate in turn-taking repair, turntaking quantity, specificity/accuracy of lexical selection,
and cohesion ties to the prior utterance.
• Articulation disordered children did not show these
problems but were more likely to be flagged for
paralinguistic aspects.
d)Children’s Conversational Checklist
(Bishop,1998)
• 70 items scored as “does not apply” (0), “applies somewhat” (1), and
“definitely applies” (2).
• Some items scored as positive (+), most as negative (-).
• Items fall into 9 categories:
– A. Speech intelligibility and fluency
– B. Syntax
– C. Inappropriate initiation
– D. Coherence
– E. Stereotyped conversation
– F. Use of conversational context
– G. Conversational rapport
– H. Social relationships
– I. Interests
• So 5 categories involve Pragmatic Language (38 items)
Children’s Conversational Checklist
Some example items:
• C. Inappropriate initiation
• Talks too much
• Keeps telling people things they know already
• D. Coherence
• Has difficulty telling a story, or describing what he
has done, in an orderly sequence of events
• Uses terms like “he” and “it” without making clear
what he is talking about
Children’s Conversational Checklist
(cont)
• E. Stereotyped conversation
• Will suddenly change the topic of conversation
• Has favorite phrases and sentences which he will use
a great deal, sometimes inappropriately
• F. Use of conversational context
• Tends to be over literal (e.g., “watch your hands”)
• May say things which are tactless or socially
inappropriate
• G. Conversational rapport
• Ignores conversational overtures from others
• Seldom or never looks at the person he is talking to
Children’s Conversational Checklist
• Fairly good clinician inter-rater reliability and
internal consistency -- in the .80 range.
• Pragmatic composite score (the 38 items)
discriminates significantly between autistic,
pragmatic language impaired (without autism),
other SLI, and typically developing children.
• Low correlations between teacher/clinician ratings
and parent ratings (+.48 on pragmatic composite
score)
Summary of Conversational Assessment
• The pragmatic problems of autistic spectrum and pragmatic
language impaired children seem to lie fundamentally in the
Gricean conversational principles that depend on mutuality
of communication (and theory of mind) -- turn taking, topic
and referential continuity and relevance, assessing listeners
state of knowledge or ignorance etc.
• The pragmatic problems of SLI children without any socialcognitive impairments seem to lie at the interface of syntax,
semantics and pragmatics. Limitations in syntactic and
lexical understanding and expression impair the linguistic
aspects of conversational coherence and cohesion,
referential specificity, and repair strategies.
How to Assess
a)
2) Speech Acts
Language Sample Analysis
– Structuring the interaction to get the child to produce different
speech acts -- especially requests (Roth & Spekman, 1984)
– e.g., where child has to ask a “shy puppet” to do things
– e.g., situations where the child has to solve a problem:
• Pencils with broken points, puzzle with a piece missing, paints without
brushes etc.
b)
Controlled Elicited Production Procedures
– Question Asking (DELV-CR, 2003; de Villiers, 2004)
– asking the right Wh-question to find out specific information
– Communicative Role Taking (DELV-CR; de Villiers,
2004; TOPL, 1992)
– understanding the communicative perspective of others and
knowing what speech acts they are producing.
Key Features of Elicited Production
Materials and Procedures
• They provide referential support and pragmatic motivation
for the language forms and functions to be produced, so
they increase the likelihood that those forms and functions
will be sampled in the assessment.
• They constrain the range of appropriate utterances, so they
are more easily scored than a more open-ended language
sample.
• They retain a considerable degree of communicative
naturalness in the elicitation procedure rather than resorting
to modeling and imitation to elicit these forms.
The Subject Sample
• Data will be shown from 1014 four to nine year olds, most
of them from working class backgrounds and from all
regions of the USA (taken from the DELV-CR field testing).
• There were 217 four-year-olds, 266 five-year-olds, 300 sixyear-olds, 56 seven-year-olds, 101 eight-year-olds and 74
nine-year-olds.
• Approximately 60% of the children were characterized by
the testing clinicians as speakers of African American
English (AAE), the other 40% as speakers of Mainstream
American English (MAE).
• Approximately 1/3rd of the children at each age and in each
dialect group were identified by the participating clinicians
and schools as having a specific language impairment and
were receiving language services.
Question Asking
• The child is shown a picture with something missing from
it.
• They have to ask the right question to find out what the
event is about.
• The missing elements of the pictures include objects,
people, locations, tools, and causes of emotions -- so what,
who, where, how, and why questions are motivated.
• Different levels of prompting are given for each trial if the
child does not spontaneously ask an appropriate question -varying from the semantic domain of the question to ask, to
the specific wh-word to begin the question with.
• If the child asks an appropriate question they are shown the
complete picture.
The girl is painting something. Ask me the right question and
I’ll show you the answer.
QuickTime™ and a
Photo - JPEG decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
c. The Psychological Corporation
What?
QuickTime™ and a
Photo - JPEG decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
c. The Psychological Corporation
who
where
why
how
what
who
where
why
who eats what
5 year old TypicalAAE
WHAT IS THE NURSE FEEDING?
WHERE DID SHE GO SWIMMING?
WHAT IS THE GIRL MAD ABOUT?
HOW IS THE GIRL FIXIN' THAT?
WHAT IS THE WOMAN EATING?
WHO IS RIDING THE BIKE?
WHERE IS THAT BOY GOING?
WHAT HAPPENED?
WHAT IS THEY EATING?
6 year old TypicalAAE
who
WHO IS THE NURSE FEEDING?
where
WHERE DID THE GIRL SWIM?
why
WHAT IS THE GIRL MAD FOR?
how
WHAT IS THE GIRL FIXING?
what
WHAT IS THE GIRL EATING?
who
WHO IS RIDING THE BIKE?
where
WHERE IS THE BOY RUNNING?
why
WHY IS THE BOY CRYING?
who eats what WHAT ARE THE PEOPLE EATING?
who
where
why
how
what
who
where
why
who eats what
8 year-old TypicalAAE
WHO IS THE NURSE FEEDING?
WHERE DID THE GIRL GO SWIMMING?
WHY IS THE GIRL MAD?
HOW IS THE GIRL FIXING THE TOY?
WHAT IS THE WOMAN EATING?
WHO IS RIDING THE BIKE?
WHAT IS THE BOY RUNNING TO?
WHY IS THE BOY CRYING?
WHO IS EATING WHAT FOOD?
5 year old DISAAE
NR
SHE MAKING A POOL.
WHAT THE GIRL
SHE'S FIXING HIS BIKE
WHAT SOME MEAT
WHAT A BOY
THE BOY IS RUNNING TO THE ICE CREAM
WHAT?
NR
6 year old DISAAE
WHO IS THAT FEEDING HIM?
SHE JUMPED IN THE WATER.
SHE MAD AT THE TABLE.
SHE IS FIXIN THE TOY.
WHO'S EATIN?
A BOY RIDIN ON THE BIKE.
WHO'S RUNNING?
HE DROPPED HIS ICE CREAM.
WHO'S EATIN?
8 year old DISAAE
WHO IS SHE FEEDING?
WHAT SOMETHING SHE SWIM IN?
WHO IS SHE MAD AT?
WHAT'S SHE HOLDING ON HER HAND?
WHAT HER MOM EATING FROM HER TWO FINGERS?
SOMETHING RIDING A BICYCLE.
WHERE IS HIS HOUSE?
WAS HE CRYING?
HOW WAS THEY WAS EATING?
Wh-Question production in MAE and AAE speaking children
following all prompts.
Wh-Question Production
9
8
Average Score /9
7
6
5
AAE
MAE
4
3
2
1
0
4
5
6
7
Age
8
9
Wh-Question production in typically developing and
language impaired children following all prompts.
Wh-Question Production
9
8
Average Score /9
7
6
5
IMPAIRED
TYPICAL
4
3
2
1
0
4
5
6
7
Age
8
9
Appropriate why-question production in MAE and AAE
speaking children following semantic prompt.
Appropriate why-question production in typically-developing
and language-impaired children following semantic prompt.
Communicative Role Taking and Understanding
Speech Acts
• Children not only need to produce different kind of speech
acts at appropriate times (e.g., asking for information,
requesting action, rejecting or denying, prohibiting etc.);
they also need to understand the circumstances and force of
those utterances in other people.
• The children were shown pictures in which a person was
communicating to another about some object or event that
was clearly depicted. They were asked what the characters
were telling (reporting an observed event), asking, or
saying (prohibiting an action), depending on the scenario.
Picture context for “asking” (requesting an object or action).
QuickTime™ and a
Photo - JPEG decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Picture context for “asking” (requesting an object or action).
QuickTime™ and a
Photo - JPEG decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Communicative Role Taking in two AAE speaking fouryear-olds.
TYPICAL AAE
TELL HIS BIG SISTER FELLED OFF HER BIKE
ASK CAN I PLAY BASEBALL?
ASK CAN I HAVE A PIECE OF CAKE?
SAY YOU DON'T FEED THE DOG. THAT'S HIS OWN FOOD
IMPAIRED AAE
TELL HER BLEEDIN'
ASK HIM CARRY SOMETHING
ASK HER SAY LOOK AT THE CAKE
SAY HE FEEDIN THE DOG
Development of appropriate speech act production in a
communicative role taking context
(MAE versus AAE speaking children)
Communicative Role Taking
Average Score /4
4
3
AAE
MAE
2
1
0
4
5
6
7
Age
8
9
Development of appropriate speech act production in a
communicative role taking context
(typically developing versus language impaired children).
Communicative Role Taking
4
Average Score /4
3
IMPAIRED
TYPICAL
2
1
0
4
5
6
7
Age
8
9
How to Assess?
3) Referential Communication and
Specification
• Telling my listener(s) who and what I am referring to.
• Several linguistic devices in English serve to identify one
object or person out of a possible set.
• These include adjectives that specify a distinctive property
of the object or person, prepositional phrases that specify
their location, and relative clauses that refer to either a
distinctive property, location, or action.
• Eliciting these in a referential communication task
– (P. de Villiers, 1988)
Reference Specification -- Testing Procedure
• Examiner and child play a referential communication game.
• The child sees a picture that the examiner cannot see. S/he
has to describe an event that is happening in part of the
picture so that the examiner can pick out the person or object
involved in the event from a set of similar people or objects.
• In some trials there is a distinctive property that
distinguishes the referent. In others it is the location or
action of the referent that must be mentioned.
• In this way the linguistic form that must be produced
increases in complexity from adjectives to prepositional
phrases and finally to relative clauses.
Here are two horses.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Tell me what is happening in the red box. I need to know
which horse it is.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Here are two policemen.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Tell me what is happening in the red box. I need to know
which policeman it is.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Here are two boys.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Tell me what is happening in the red box. I need to know
which boy it is.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Development of reference specification in MAE and AAE
speaking children. Production of form and function following
all prompts.
Development of reference specification in typicallydeveloping and language-impaired children. Spontaneous
production of form and function before any prompts.
Development of reference specification in typicallydeveloping and language-impaired children. Production of
form and function following all prompts.
How to Assess?
4) Narration
• Narrative Elicitation Techniques:
–
–
–
–
–
Personal narratives -- anecdotes
Story retelling
Wordless picture books (e.g. the Frog Story)
Shorter picture sequences
Fantasy, creative stories
• Scoring Coherence
• Scoring Cohesion
• Mental States of the Characters -- the “landscape
of consciousness” (Bruner, 1986).
Scoring Narrative Coherence
• Story Grammars (e.g., Stein & Glenn, 1979; Johnston, 1982)
– Setting information
• Conventional (“once upon a time”)
• Characters, place and time
• Purpose and motivation
– Episode structure
• Initiating events
• Actions and behavioral reactions
• Outcomes/results
– Internal reactions, plans and goals
• Emotions
– simple (“happy”, “sad”, “angry”, “afraid”)
– complex (“worried”, “jealous”, “surprised”, “guilty”)
• Desires
– From wanting objects and actions to wanting events
• Cognitions
– Thoughts, beliefs and states of knowledge
Scoring Narrative Cohesion
• Referential Cohesion
– Introducing characters
– Maintaining reference to characters (e.g. article and
pronoun use)
– Contrasting characters (e.g., names, adjectives, relative
clauses)
• Causal Cohesion
• Temporal Cohesion
– Sequencers (e.g., then, next)
– Foregrounding and backgrounding temporal clauses
(e.g., while, when, after)
Ideal Properties of Picture Sequence
Materials
• Two similar same sex protagonists so the child
narrator has to introduce them and maintain
reference to them while keeping them contrasted
for the listener.
• A series of events that have to be explicitly related
to each other by means of temporal and causal
links.
• Explicit depiction and implicit involvement of the
mental states of the characters so the child is
motivated to make reference to the landscape of
consciousness of the story.
The Candy Stealing Story
The Balloon Popping Story
Narrative Assessments
• Comprehensive analysis of personal narratives
(e.g., Bliss, McCabe & Miranda, 1998) or other
elicited narratives (e.g., Hedberg & Westby, 1993).
• Dynamic assessment of narrative skills based on
picture books (Miller, Gillam, & Pena, 2003)
• Cohesion and theory of mind in picture sequence
narratives (DELV-CR, 2004; P. de Villiers, 2004)
A short, wordless picture-sequence narrative to elicit
reference specification, temporal cohesion, and mental state
references (DELV-CR, 2004)
QuickTime™ and a
Photo - JPEG decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Narrative Samples 1
• I want my train. I’m gonna hide the train from him. I’m gonna play out
of the toy box. I’m gonna find that train. Bring that train. (C: 4;2)
• He was looking for the choo choo train because the other boy was
playin’. And then… and then he said, “I want that choo choo train
back”, and umm… he put it in his toy box. And then he came back to
find it and he looked under the bed and it wasn’t there. (SC: 4;9)
Narrative Samples 2
• The big boy came into the little boy’s room and took away the little
boy’s train. Then he hid it under the boy’s bed where he couldn’t get it.
Then the little boy… when he left… he got out his train and put it in the
toy box while the big boy was eating. Then the big boy thought about
the train and he went under the bed to go see it but it wasn’t there.
(A: 6;4)
• The little brother was trying to get his toy from the big brother. And the
big brother hiding his toy under the bed. When he is eating his
sandwich, the little boy go and get it and put it inside of his toy box.
When his big brother walk in, he think about the train and he look
under his bed for it. (J: 6;3)
Development of reference contrast in narratives (contrasting
the two main characters) in typically developing MAE and
AAE speaking children.
Reference Contrast in Spoken Narrative
Proportion of Group
1
0.8
0.6
AAE
MAE
0.4
0.2
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Development of reference contrast in narratives (contrasting
the two main characters) in typically developing and language
impaired children.
Reference Contrast in Spoken Narrative
Proportion of the Group
1
0.8
0.6
Impaired
Typical
0.4
0.2
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Development of the expression of temporal links between
events in the narratives of typically developing MAE and
AAE speaking children.
Temporal Links in Spoken Narrative
Average Score /2
2
1.5
AAE
MAE
1
0.5
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Development of the expression of temporal links between
events in the narratives of typically developing and language
impaired children.
Temporal Links in Spoken Narrative
Average Score /2
2
1.5
Impaired
Typical
1
0.5
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Following their spontaneous narrative the children were asked two followup questions to probe for their theory of mind understanding:
-- Tell me again what is happening in this picture (picture 5)
--The big boy is looking for the train under the bed.
Why is he looking there?
QuickTime™ and a
Photo - JPEG decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
c. The Psychological Corporation
Development of mental state references to describe the
“thought balloon” picture (typically developing MAE versus
AAE speaking children)
Mental State Descriptions of Picture 5
Average Score /2
2
1.5
AAE
MAE
1
0.5
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Development of mental state references to describe the
“thought balloon” picture (typically developing versus
language impaired children).
Mental State Descriptions of Picture 5
Average Score /2
2
1.5
Impaired
Typical
1
0.5
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Development of “theory of mind” explanations for the
character’s mistaken action in the picture narrative (typically
developing MAE versus AAE speaking children).
Mental State Explanations of Action
Average Score /2
2
1.5
AAE
MAE
1
0.5
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Development of “theory of mind” explanations for the
character’s mistaken action in the picture narrative (typically
developing versus language impaired children).
Mental State Explanations of Action
Average Score /2
2
1.5
Impaired
Typical
1
0.5
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Development of combined narrative skills in MAE and AAE
speaking children aged 4 to 12.
Spoken Narrative Score
7
Average Score /7
6
5
4
AAE
MAE
3
2
1
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Overall narrative scores in typically developing and language
impaired children aged 4 though 12.
Spoken Narrative Score
7
Average Score /7
6
5
4
Impaired
Typical
3
2
1
0
4.5
5.5
6.5
8
Age
10
12
Conclusion
• Assessment of language pragmatics is both
important and doable (though not yet available all
in one place).
• A core tool-kit would include:
– A checklist of key pragmatic features that are both diagnostic of
disorder and informative about targets for intervention (and that can
be reliably filled out by a professional who has observed the child
in conversation with familiar adults and peers).
– A conversational protocol to elicit a range of conversational skills
from a child in interaction with a familiar adult, and focused
categories of analysis for that conversational sample (preferably
without having to transcribe it).
– A set of controlled elicited production and comprehension
procedures to assess mastery of important component
communication skills (with adequate reliability, concept validity,
and normative information).
References for Pragmatic Assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
General:
Adams, C. (2002). Practitioner review: The assessment of language pragmatics.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 973-987.
Creaghead, N. (1984). Strategies for evaluating and targeting pragmatic
behaviors in young children. Seminars in Speech and Language, 5, 241-252.
Roth, F. & Spekman, N, (1984). Assessing the pragmatic abilities of children:
Part 1. Organizational framework and assessment parameters. Journal of
Speech and Hearing Disorders, 49, 2-11.
Roth, F. & Spekman, N, (1984). Assessing the pragmatic abilities of children:
Part 2. Guidelines, considerations, and specific evaluation procedures. Journal
of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 49, 12-17.
Conversational Analysis:
Craig, H. & Evans, J. (1993). Pragmatics and SLI: within-group variations in
discourse behaviors. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36, 777-789.
Ervin-Tripp, S. (2000). Studying conversation: How to get natural peer
interaction. In L. Menn & N.B. Ratner (Eds.), Methods for studying language
production. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
References for Pragmatic Assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Checklists and Profiles:
Bishop, D. (1998). Development of the Children’s Communication Checklist (CCC): A
method for assessing qualitative aspects of communication impairment in children.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 39, 879-891.
Bishop, D. & Baird, G. (2001). Parent and teacher report of pragmatic aspects of
communication: Use of the Children’s Communication Checklist in a clinical setting.
Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 43, 809-818.
Prutting, C. & Kirchner, D. (1987). A clinical appraisal of the pragmatic aspects of
language. Journal of Speech and Language Disorders, 52, 105-119.
Standardized Tests of Pragmatics:
Adams, C., Cook, R., Crutchley, A., Hesketh, A., & Reeves, D. (2001). Assessment of
Comprehension and Expression 6-11 (ACE 6-11). Windsor, UK: NFER-Nelson.
de Villiers, P. A. (2004). Assessing pragmatic skills in elicited production. Seminars in
Speech and Language, 25, 57-72.
Seymour, H., Roeper, T., & de Villiers, J. (2004). The Diagnostic Evaluation of Language
Variation (DELV). The Psychological Corporation.
Phelps-Terasaki, D. & Phelps-Gunn, T. (1992). Test of Pragmatic Language. The
Psychological Corporation.
Lloyd, P., Peers, I., & Foster, C. (2001). The Listening Skills Test. The Psychological
Corporation.
References for Pragmatic Assessment
• Narrative:
• Bliss, L., McCabe, A., & Miranda, A.E. (1998). Narrative assessment
profile: Discourse analysis for school-age children. Journal of
Communication Disorders, 31, 347-363.
• Hedberg, N. & Westby, C. (1993). Analyzing story-telling skills: Theory
to practice. Tucson, AZ: Communication Skill Builders.
• Miller, L., Gillam, R., & Pena, E. (2003). Dynamic assessment and
intervention: Improving children’s narrative abilities. AGS Publishing.
•
Seymour, H., Roeper, T., & de Villiers, J. (2004). The Diagnostic Evaluation of
Language Variation (DELV). The Psychological Corporation.

Download Report