Aim: The primary aim of the contributions to this panel will be to provide systematic empirical data on the developmental trends of pragmatic verbal skills in Italian preschool and school-age children, both with typical and atypical language development. Particular attention will be given to some key aspects of pragmatic competence, e.g. adjustment to the informational needs of the partner, comprehension of non-literal language, and alternative communicative strategies to convey one single meaning. Background: In the last 30 years, the development of pragmatic abilities in children has become a topic of central interest in psychology and linguistics. Conceiving of pragmatics as appropriate context-related use of language, many specific topics have been investigated over the years, from prelinguistic communicative skills as a prerequisite for language acquisition (Bates, Camaioni Volterra, 1979) to the role of interactive input in structuring children's grammar (Slobin, Gerhardt, Kyratzis Guo, 1996). Psychological studies of the development of referential communication have employed complex tasks in which the child is to compute the degree of perceptual availability of the target to both speaker and hearer, in a given environment, and to select and convey the most relevant features for the target to be effectively individuated by the hearer. It seems that only at age 6 do children show evidence of the necessary interplay of different information sources needed for completing a referential communication task (Di Sano Colla 2001). Such results are closely linked with research on other verbal pragmatic abilities which also require the computation of the relevance of an information for a hearer in a context. In this perspective, particular interest has been shown for the study of implicit meaning and a great deal of experimental work has derived from a reconsideration of H. P. Grice's (1989) definitions of inferential meaning and figurative language, with special reference to the development of metaphor, idiom and irony understanding (Wimmer, Rosenstiel Gardner, 1976; Evans Gamble, 1988; Levorato Cacciari, 1994; Nippold Taylor, 2002). The application of Relevance Theory (Sperber Wilson, 1986/1995) to the development of pragmatic abilities has also provided theoretically consistent results on how children gradually become able to manage implicit meaning comprehension, with special reference to implicatures (Papafragou Musolino, 2003). However, at present systematic data on the development of verbal pragmatic skills in preschool and school-age children are still lacking. We argue that theoretically sound systematic data are needed in order to better understand the developmental trends of different verbal pragmatic abilities (from referential abilities to metaphor comprehension). We further assume that knowledge of the psychological processes underlying pragmatic skills in children can be gathered also by comparing the performance of normally developing children with that of children who present with neurogenic communication disorders. This neuropsychological perspective may allow a better understanding of the psychological processes underlying the differential development of specific verbal pragmatic abilities. Actually, neuropsychological research suggests that children with Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) may present with a specific and long-lasting impairment in the processing of implicit meaning and/or in producing coherent discourse (Bishop Adams, 1989). Children who are impaired in interhemispheric callosal transfer due to agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC), a structure of the brain that allows for hemispheric communication, do seem to show pragmatic deficits with respect to implicit meaning and prosody comprehension (Dennis, 1981; Brown Paul, 2000). Furthermore, Brown and Paul (2000) described cases of ACC who exhibited a peculiar narrative style, characterised by a marked omission of mentalistic terms. Finally, it has been widely shown that autistic children present with a constellation of pragmatic deficits ranging from interaction to implicit meaning, which may be attributed to the child's failure to understand the relevance of other people's inner states such as beliefs and desires (Happé, 1996). Methods: The contributions to this panel present systematic data on the development of some of the major verbal pragmatic skills in Italian children with normal development and children with atypical development. However the panel is open to contributions from languages other than Italian. Results from both formal and ecological assessment procedures are illustrated. Results: The contributions to this panel will illustrate the developmental trends of some major verbal pragmatic abilties. In particular, it will concentrate on how children gradually learn to: a) apply strategies to solve referential problems; b) understand others' intentions; c) understand metaphors, idioms and prosody; d) use both grammar and pragmatics in telling an effective narrative. By combining data on normal development with data on atypical development, this panel is meant to provide up to date insights into the cognitive and linguistic processes underlying verbal pragmatic skills.
Tavano, A., DE FABRITIIS, P. (2005). Development of Verbal Pragmatic Abilities in Children: Empirical Studies. In Abstracts.
Development of Verbal Pragmatic Abilities in Children: Empirical Studies
DE FABRITIIS, PAOLA
2005
Abstract
Aim: The primary aim of the contributions to this panel will be to provide systematic empirical data on the developmental trends of pragmatic verbal skills in Italian preschool and school-age children, both with typical and atypical language development. Particular attention will be given to some key aspects of pragmatic competence, e.g. adjustment to the informational needs of the partner, comprehension of non-literal language, and alternative communicative strategies to convey one single meaning. Background: In the last 30 years, the development of pragmatic abilities in children has become a topic of central interest in psychology and linguistics. Conceiving of pragmatics as appropriate context-related use of language, many specific topics have been investigated over the years, from prelinguistic communicative skills as a prerequisite for language acquisition (Bates, Camaioni Volterra, 1979) to the role of interactive input in structuring children's grammar (Slobin, Gerhardt, Kyratzis Guo, 1996). Psychological studies of the development of referential communication have employed complex tasks in which the child is to compute the degree of perceptual availability of the target to both speaker and hearer, in a given environment, and to select and convey the most relevant features for the target to be effectively individuated by the hearer. It seems that only at age 6 do children show evidence of the necessary interplay of different information sources needed for completing a referential communication task (Di Sano Colla 2001). Such results are closely linked with research on other verbal pragmatic abilities which also require the computation of the relevance of an information for a hearer in a context. In this perspective, particular interest has been shown for the study of implicit meaning and a great deal of experimental work has derived from a reconsideration of H. P. Grice's (1989) definitions of inferential meaning and figurative language, with special reference to the development of metaphor, idiom and irony understanding (Wimmer, Rosenstiel Gardner, 1976; Evans Gamble, 1988; Levorato Cacciari, 1994; Nippold Taylor, 2002). The application of Relevance Theory (Sperber Wilson, 1986/1995) to the development of pragmatic abilities has also provided theoretically consistent results on how children gradually become able to manage implicit meaning comprehension, with special reference to implicatures (Papafragou Musolino, 2003). However, at present systematic data on the development of verbal pragmatic skills in preschool and school-age children are still lacking. We argue that theoretically sound systematic data are needed in order to better understand the developmental trends of different verbal pragmatic abilities (from referential abilities to metaphor comprehension). We further assume that knowledge of the psychological processes underlying pragmatic skills in children can be gathered also by comparing the performance of normally developing children with that of children who present with neurogenic communication disorders. This neuropsychological perspective may allow a better understanding of the psychological processes underlying the differential development of specific verbal pragmatic abilities. Actually, neuropsychological research suggests that children with Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) may present with a specific and long-lasting impairment in the processing of implicit meaning and/or in producing coherent discourse (Bishop Adams, 1989). Children who are impaired in interhemispheric callosal transfer due to agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC), a structure of the brain that allows for hemispheric communication, do seem to show pragmatic deficits with respect to implicit meaning and prosody comprehension (Dennis, 1981; Brown Paul, 2000). Furthermore, Brown and Paul (2000) described cases of ACC who exhibited a peculiar narrative style, characterised by a marked omission of mentalistic terms. Finally, it has been widely shown that autistic children present with a constellation of pragmatic deficits ranging from interaction to implicit meaning, which may be attributed to the child's failure to understand the relevance of other people's inner states such as beliefs and desires (Happé, 1996). Methods: The contributions to this panel present systematic data on the development of some of the major verbal pragmatic skills in Italian children with normal development and children with atypical development. However the panel is open to contributions from languages other than Italian. Results from both formal and ecological assessment procedures are illustrated. Results: The contributions to this panel will illustrate the developmental trends of some major verbal pragmatic abilties. In particular, it will concentrate on how children gradually learn to: a) apply strategies to solve referential problems; b) understand others' intentions; c) understand metaphors, idioms and prosody; d) use both grammar and pragmatics in telling an effective narrative. By combining data on normal development with data on atypical development, this panel is meant to provide up to date insights into the cognitive and linguistic processes underlying verbal pragmatic skills.
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