Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, Volume 49, 2-11, February 1984

A S S E S S I N G T H E P R A G M A T I C A B I L I T I E S OF C H I L D R E N :
P A R T 1. O R G A N I Z A T I O N A L FRAMEWORK AND ASSESSMENT
PARAMETERS

FROMA P. ROTH NANCYJ. SPEKMAN

University of Maryland, College Park

This paper describes an organizational framework for the assessment of pragmatic abilities in children. The framework
addresses the areas of communicative intention, presupposition, and the social organization of discourse. For each area,
assessment parameters are presented in coordination with a review of pertinent literature.

Recent approaches to the study of child language have
emerged from a renewed interest in pragmatics, the rules
governing the use of language in a social context (Bates,
1976). This is in contrast to the focus during the past two
decades on the structural aspects of language. It is now
realized that in addition to learning the phonologic,
semantic and syntactic rules of language, a child must
also master the rules that underlie how language is used
for the purpose of communication (Hymes, 1971). The
acquisition of these rules requires a complex integration
of linguistic, cognitive, and social knowledge.
The development of pragmatic skills in handicapped
children has not received substantial attention despite
the recognition by practitioners that there are children
whose social interaction abilities cannot be directly tied
to their linguistic skills (Bernard-Opitz, 1982; Blank,
Gessner, & Esposito, 1979; Snyder, 1978; Spekman,
1981). Numerous clinical reports indicate that these chil-
dren demonstrate major communication deficits which
transcend their problems with form and content or which
exist even in the presence of normal linguistic skills. The
problems exhibited by these children illustrate that lin-
guistic knowledge alone does not guarantee appropriate
language use. There are also children who manifest poor
social interaction abilities that can be accounted for by a
primary linguistic deficit (Brinton & Fujiki, 1982; Fey &
Leonard, 1983; Leonard, Camarata, Rowan, & Chapman,
1982) or cognitive deficit (Beveridge, 1976: Guralnick,
1978). However, most clinicians and special educators do
not yet have an adequate framework for assessing prag-
matic difficulties regardless of their foundation.
Whereas the development of formalized pragmatic as-
sessment instruments must await a clearer delineation of
a normal developmental sequence, it is now possible to
draw on empirical and theoretical literature to construct
an organizational framework for analyzing performance in
this area. Such a framework can aid the practitioner in
fulfilling the two major objectives of assessment: (a) to
determine the effectiveness of a child as a communicator,
and (b) to provide recommendations regarding appropri-
ate intervention strategies. The purpose of this paper is to
present such a framework along with a discussion of the
relevant behavioral dimensions that warrant attention in
the assessment of pragmatic abilities. The construction of
this framework is based, in part, on the pioneering work
of others including Bates (1976) and Miller (1978).
It is our intention that this assessment framework be
viewed as an extension of existing diagnostic models.
Without information about language structure and cogni-
tive growth, it is difficult to arrive at a well-informed and
accurate decision regarding the integrity of a child's
communication system.
ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORK
There are different levels at which communication
skills ean be analyzed, and any one message can be
classified differently depending upon the level of analy-
sis selected (Figure 1). The first level involves an exami-
nation of the communicative intentions that a speaker
wishes to convey. For example, a message may be used to
comment, request, greet, protest, or direct the behavior of
others (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). At this level of analy-
sis, the focus is on a single message which is encoded by a
speaker and/or interpreted by a listener. The second level
of analysis, presupposition, broadens this focus to encom-
pass a speaker's message in relation to the specific infor-
mation needs of a listener. Presupposition involves that
information which is not necessarily explicit in a message
but which must be shared by the communication partners
ira message is to be understood (Bates, 1976; Rees, 1978).
Implicit in the notion of presupposition is the ability to
make appropriate inferences regarding shared knowledge
and partner needs. The third area, social organization of
discourse, has to do with maintaining a dialogue between
and among partners over several conversational turns.
This level expands the analysis further to focus on the
dynamic and reciprocal nature of an ongoing social inter-
action.
To analyze communication behavior at any one of these
levels, the context in which an interaction occurs must be
considered (Bloom, 1970; Halliday, 1975; Keller-Cohen,

© 1984, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 2 0022-4677/84/4901-0002501.00/0


I COMMUNICATIVE [
INTENTION
E
ORGANIZATION
OF DISCOURSE PRESUPPOSITION
• TURNTAKING • INFORMATIVENESS 1
• TOPIC INITIATION, • SOCIAL CONTEXT [
MAINTENANCE, (Communicationpartner, I
TERMINATION Communicationchannels,]
• REPAIRBREAKDOWN
AND Setting)
I lona (1973), Bates, Camaioni, and Volterra (1975), and
FmURE 1. Organizational framework for assessing pragmatic
abilities (Spekman & Roth, 1982).
1978; Ochs, 1979). The nature of the interaction is influ-
enced, for example, by the channels available for commu-
nication and feedback, the physical environment itself,
and the characteristics of the communication partners.
Context is thus viewed as a variable that affects the type
and form of communicative intentions conveyed, the
information that must be presupposed, and the manner in
which conversations are organized.
ASSESSMENT PARAMETERS
Communicative Intentions
At this level of assessment, it is important to consider
the intentions that a child conveys (illocutionary act) and
the effect that these intentions have on a listener (perlo-
cutionary act). Therefore, the evaluation of communica-
tive intentions involves an analysis both of the range of
intentions understood and expressed as well as the verbal
and/or nonverbal forms in which they are coded. This
twofold approach is warranted for the following reasons:
1. A communicative intention can be conveyed gestural-
ly, through a large variety of body movements; paralin-
guistieally, through changes in stress patterns, dura-
tion, intonation, pitch, and intensity levels; and/or
linguistically, through words, phrases, and sentences.
For example, someone who wanted to find out the
ROTH & SPEKMAN: Assessing Pragmatic Abilities: Part i 3
time might say, "Would you mind telling me the
time?", "What time is it?", "Do you know what time it
is?", or "I wish I had a watch."
2. An utterance can be used to convey a variety of
possible intentions. For example, "May I have some
salt?" may be used to request permission or gain
factual information (such as when addressed to a
physician prescribing a diet) or to direct the behavior
of another (as when addressed to a dinner companion).
As illustrated by the examples given above, communi-
cative intentions may he expressed directly, requiring
only a literal interpretation of the message (e.g., What
time is it?) or indirectly, requiring a degree of infer-
ence on the part of the listener (e.g., I wish I had a
watch).
Range of intentions. There are many systems available
for coding the range of communicative intentions. Selec-
tion of a particular coding system will depend on the
linguistic sophistication of a child. For example, different
systems have been proposed for nonverbal children,
1 those at the single-word stage of development and those
beyond.
Beginning at about 9 months of age, children have been
found to use a wide variety of intentions which they
] express through gestures and early vocalizations. Esca-
Halliday (1975) have each identified a set of these early
communicative behaviors. A comparison of their catego-
ries indicates that there is a core set of intentions commu-
nicated by preverbal children (Table 1). To assess a child
at the single-word stage of development, the work of Dale
(1980), Dore (1974, 1975), and Halliday (1975) should be
considered. These investigators have each outlined a
system for classifying the communicative functions of
one-word utterances. Table 2 presents a schema for
coding these early linguistic intentions that is based on
their proposals. For children beyond the single word
stage of language acquisition, the only available data are
provided by Dore (1978a, 1978b) and Halliday (1975).
Dore, for example, observed seven 3-year-old children in
both play and structured school activities. He reported
that his subjects' utterances fell into seven major catego-
ries of intention: requests, responses, descriptions, state-
ments, acknowledgments, conversational devices, and
performatives. Dore's system is presented in a modified
and condensed version appropriate for clinical use in
Table 3.
Form of intentions. The analysis of intention form may
be approached in several ways. First, one can examine
the sophistication with which an intention is coded by
assessing whether a child uses gestural, paralinguistic,
and/or linguistic means. A child who is at the single word
stage may encode certain intentions linguistically al-
though relying on gestural means for conveying others.
Failure to look at both forms may result in an inaccurate
estimation of a child's communicative abilities. For exam-
ple, this child's pattern may reflect a linguistic limitation
rather than a restricted range of intentions. Second, the
linguistic structures used to convey an intention can be
analyzed. For a young language learner, a classification
4 Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 49 '2-11 F e b r u a r y 1984

TABLE 1. Preverbal communicative intentions.

Intention Descriptive example

1. Attention seeking
a. to self Child tugs on mother's jeans to secure attention.
b. to events, objects, or other people Child points to airplane to draw mother's attention to it.
9. Requesting
a. objects Child points to toy animal that he wants.
b. action Child hands book to adult to have story read.
c. information Child points to usual location of cookie jar (which is not there)
and simultaneously secures eye contact with mother to
determine its whereabouts.
3. Greetings Child waves "hi" or "bye."
4, Transferring Child gives mother the toy that he was playing with.
5. Protesting/Rejecting Child cries when mother takes away toy.
Child pushes away a dish of oatmeal.
6. Responding/Acknowledging Child responds appropriately to simple directions/Child smiles
when parent initiates a favorite game.
7. Informing Child points to wheel on his toy truck to show mother that it is
broken.

Note. Categories are derived in part from Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra (1975); Coggins & Carpenter (1981); Dore (1974); Esealona (1973);
Greenfield & Smith (1976); Halliday (1975).

system of semantic relations can be e m p l o y e d (Bloom &
Lahey, 1978; Brown, 1973). For a more syntactically
advanced child, messages ean be coded for sentence
types (e.g., declarative, interrogative, negative, passive,
imperative, eonjoined, e m b e d d e d , and sentences with
indirect object movement). A third approach involves an
examination of the degree of explicitness with which an
i n t e n t i o n is expressed. For example, E r v i n - T r i p p (1977)
p r e s e n t e d a schema for classifying requests for action that
illustrates this c o n t i n u u m (Table 4). T h e examples in
Table 4 highlight the different ways in which one person
might obtain ice cream from another person. The catego-
ries are organized generally from most to least explicit.
Within the category of e m b e d d e d imperatives, both posi-
tive and negative forms can be evaluated (e.g., Can you
open the door? vs. C a n ' t you open the door?). Further,
directives that expect initiation as opposed to cessation of
behavior can be e x a m i n e d (e.g., Will you open the door?

TABLE 9 Communicative intentions expressed at the single-word level.

Intention Definition Example

1. Naming Common and proper nouns that label people, ob- "'Dog," "Party," "Table"
jects, events, and locations.
2. Commenting Words that describe physical attributes of objects, "Big," "Here," "Mine"
events, and people, including size, shape, and Io-
cation; observable movements and actions of ob-
jects and people; and words that refer to attri-
butes which are not immediately observable such
as possession and usual location. These words are
not contingent on prior utterances.
3. Requesting object
a. present Words that solicit an object that is present in the "Gimme," "Cookie" (accompanied by gesture
environment. and/or visual regard)
b. absent Words that solicit an absent object "Ball" (child pulls mother to another room)
4. Requesting action Words that solicit an action be initiated or contin- "Up" (child wants to be picked up), "More"
ued
5. Requesting information Words that solicit information about an object, ac- "Shoe?" (meaning "Is this a shoe?") "Wad~et?"
tion, person, or location. Rising intonation is also (What's that?)
included.
6. Responding Words that directly complement preceding utter- "Crayon" (in response to "What's that?") "Yes"
ances. (in response to "Do you want to go outside?")
7. Protesting/Rejecting Words that express objection to ongoing or im- "No" (in response to being tickled), "Yuk" (child
pending action or event. pushes away unwanted food)
8. Attention seeking Words that solicit attention to the child or to as- "Mommy!.... Watch!"
pects of the environment.
9. Greetings Words that express salutations and other conven- "Hi," "Bye," "Nite-nite"
tionalized rituals.

Note. Categories have been adapted from Dale (i980), Dore (I974), and Halliday (i975).
 BOTH & SPEKMAN: Assessing Pragmatic Abilities: Part 1 5

TABLE 3. Communicative intentions expressed at the multiword stage of language development.

Intention Definition Example

1. Requesting information Utterances that solicit informa- "Where's Mary?"
tion, permission, confirma- "'Can I come?"
tion, or repetition.
2. Requesting action Utterances that solicit action or "Give me the doll,"
cessation of action. "Stop it."
"Don't do that."
3. Responding to requests Utterances that supply solicited "'Okay."
information or acknowledge "Mary is over there."
preceding messages. "'No, you can't come."
"It's blue."
4. Stating or commenting Utterances that state facts or "This is a bird."
rules, express beliefs, atti- "You have to throw the dice, first."
tudes, or emotions, or de- "'I don't like dogs."
scribe environmental aspects. "I'm happy today."
"My school is two blocks away."
"He can't do it."
5. Regulating conversational Utterances that monitor and
behavior regulate interpersonal con- "Hey, Marvin!"
tact. "Yes, I see."
"Hi," "Bye," "Please."
"Here you are."
"'Know what I did?"
6. Other performatives Utterances that tease, warn, "You can't catch me."
claim, exclaim, or convey hu- "Watch out."
mor. "It's my turn."
"The dog said 'moo'."

Note. Adapted from Dore (1977, 1978a).

vs. Must you o p e n the door?) (Leonard, Wilcox, F u l m e r , that is " n e w . " A speaker, as well as a listener, m u s t
& David, 1978). differentiate b e t w e e n the two, b e t w e e n w h a t m a y b e
p r e s u p p o s e d and w h a t m u s t b e asserted. Shared informa-
tion or k n o w l e d g e can b e e s t a b l i s h e d b e t w e e n interlocu-
Presupposition tors in several ways: (a) b y m u t u a l l y m o n i t o r i n g some
shared aspect of the p h y s i c a l setting, (b) b y sharing some
A s s e s s m e n t in the area of p r e s u p p o s i t i o n focuses on the general k n o w l e d g e of the s p e e c h situation itself or of
ability of c h i l d r e n to take the p e r s p e c t i v e of their commu- one's c o m m u n i c a t i v e p a r t n e r (e.g., age, status, past expe-
nicative partner, a skill c o m m o n l y referred to as role riences), and (c) b y m u t u a l l y m o n i t o r i n g the p r e c e d i n g
taking. As n o t e d above, speakers m u s t infer information discourse.
about their partners and the context in order to d e t e r m i n e T h e role-taking skills n e c e s s a r y for c o m m u n i c a t i v e
the a p p r o p r i a t e context and form of a message; likewise, success t y p i c a l l y m u s t b e inferred from the linguistic,
listeners m u s t infer a s p e a k e r ' s i n t e n t rather than rely paralinguistic, and extralinguistic modifications that a
e x c l u s i v e l y on a literal i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of w h a t was said. It child makes w h e n c o m m u n i c a t i n g with different part-
is u n d e r s t o o d that, w i t h i n any interaction, there is some ners, for different purposes, and in different situations.
information that is " o l d " or taken for granted, and some Because t h e r e are c u r r e n t l y no formalized coding systems
available that address different aspects of role taking, the
clinician will w a n t to b e sensitive to the informativeness
TABLE 4. Directive forms. of a child's m e s s a g e s as w e l l as to variables r e l a t e d to the
social context.
Directive Example Informativeness. Studies have shown that children,
e v e n at the o n e - w o r d stage, t e n d to c o m m e n t on those
1. Direct imperative "Give me some ice cream." aspects of the e n v i r o n m e n t that are m a x i m a l l y informa-
2. Imbedded imperative "Can you give me some ice tive or c o m m u n i c a t i v e (Greenfield & Smith, 1976; G r e e n -
cream ?"
3. Permission directive "May I have some ice cream?" field & Zukow, 1978; Skarakis & Greenfield, 1982; Sny-
4. Personal need or desire "'I need (want) some ice der, 1978). To evaluate this aspect of a child's message,
statement cream." the following questions can serve as guidelines: W h a t
5. Question directive "Is there any more ice does a child choose to talk about in a given situation?
cream?"
6. Hint "Gee, that ice cream looks Does he or she e n c o d e w h a t is novel or m e r e l y c o m m e n t
good." on w h a t is a l r e a d y g i v e n or k n o w n ? Does the child code
n e w information gesturally and/or linguistically? Are
Note. Source: Ervin-Tripp (1977). messages informative, vague, or a m b i g u o u s ? Are different
6 Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders
referents clearly established for the listener? Does the
child talk differently about objects or events present in
the environment than about those not present?
In addition to examining message information, presup-
positional abilities may be reflected in linguistic devices,
including deictics, indirect/direct reference forms, and
other forms of cohesion. Examples ofdeictics are person-
al pronouns (I, you), demonstrative pronouns (this, that),
adverbs of location (here, there) and of time (before, after,
then, now), and certain verbs (come, go, bring, take). Of
themselves, deictic terms are empty of meaning. Their
interpretation depends on knowing something about the
communication act in which they play a role (Fillmore,
1975). Developmentally, deictic terms appear very early,
but syntactic mastery may not be predictive of their
pragmatic use. Because deictics are frequently contras-
five, the clinician should assess both with regard to: (a)
the "speaker principle," which has to do with the shifting
nature of reference (e.g, I and you), and (b) the "distance
principle" that requires understanding of a proximal/
distal distinction (e.g., here and there, this and that)
(Clark, 1978; Clark & Sengul, 1978).
The use of indirect/direct reference (a/the) is also
contextually determined. I f someone wishes to comment
on a particular referent that is not contextually present,
has not been mentioned previously, and about which the
listener cannot be assumed to know, a competent speaker
will typically use a form of indefinite reference (i.e, a) as
an introduction. Once introduced, the referent can be
presupposed or assumed to be shared by the interlocutors
and then may be referred to with a more definite form,
such as the or a pronoun. Like the development of deixis,
pragmatic development of reference does not necessarily
parallel syntactic development (Karmiloff-Smith, 1977,
1979; Maratsos, 1976; Warden, 1976; Webb & Abraham-
son, 1976). There are at least two semantic distinctions
employed in differentiating between definites and indefi-
nites. The first involves the distinction between specific
and nouspecific reference, and the second involves the
"nonegocentric'" view that the speaker must take in order
to introduce referents to a listener (Maratsos, 1974). The
correct use of both deixis and indirect/direct reference
has been shown to improve over the elementary school
years. However, because their use is always bound to the
particular contexts in which they occur, definitive devel-
opmental milestones cannot be given. In fact, even adults
frequently use these terms incorrectly. Therefore, the
purpose of assessing these abilities is to obtain descrip-
tive information about two important dimensions of role-
taking skills.
Deictics and indirect/direct reference can refer to refer-
ents that are external or internal to the discourse, but
there are other cohesive devices that function to establish
relations that are entirely within the discourse. These
cohesive devices include substitution, ellipsis, and con-
junction. To evaluate them, one can use the framework
presented by Halliday and Hasan (1976) (Table 5). Utili-
zation of this framework permits the clinician to examine
a child's ability to establish linguistic connections within
an oral or written discourse.
49 2-11 February 1984
TABLE 5. Cohesive relations.
Relation Example
1. Reference "The boy went to the store. He bought
some milk." (The personal pronoun "he"
replaces "the boy" in the previous
sentence.)
2. Substitution "I have several sweaters. I like the blue
ones best." (The proform "ones" replaces
"sweaters" in the previous sentence.)
3. Ellipsis "I was born in Los Angeles. Were you?"
(The second sentence presumes "born in
Los Angeles" from the first.)
4. Conjunction "John was tired. Therefore, he went to
bed." (The conjunction "therefore"
connects the two sentences as cause and
effect.)
Note. Source: Halliday and Hasan (1976).
Social context variables. An examination of context
requires attention to listener characteristics, the channels
available for communication, and the environment in
which an interaction is taking place. When evaluating the
sensitivity of a child to important partner variables, a
clinician can ask: Does the child talk differently to differ-
ent communication partners ? There are a wide variety of
audience variables that warrant attention including age,
status, level of familiarity, cognitive level, linguistic lev-
el, and shared past experiences. Modifications in mes-
sages indicative of a child's sensitivity to these variables
include changes in the degree of politeness, the degree of
intimacy, and the linguistic form used to code a particular
intent (e.g., a hint vs. a direct imperative). When talking
to younger or less advanced children, preschool children
have been shown to use a higher pitch, exaggerated
intonation, syntactic simplification, a greater proportion
of questions and directives, a greater proportion of atten-
tion-getting devices, and a greater degree of redundancy
(Camaioni, 1977; Gleason, 1973; Guralnick & Paul-
Brown, 1977, 1980; Masur, 1978; Sachs & Devin, 1976;
Shatz & Gelman, 1973). In addition, the degree of explic-
itness with which information is coded in a message can
be examined in relation to the listener. For instance,
depending on whether a partner knew the speaker had
gone to the zoo on the preceding day, a speaker might say
"That sure was fun yesterday" versus "The zoo sure was
fun yesterday."
To examine a child's appreciation of the physical con-
text, one might ask: Does the child make modifications
that reflect awareness of the channels available for com-
munication and feedback? As the number of channels and
means for communicating are reduced (e.g., face-to-face
conversations vs. telephone conversations), there is an
increased burden on the speaker to compensate for this
reduction of information by making the language used as
clear and explicit as possible. Flavell, Botkin, Fry,
Wright, and Jarvis's (1968) preschoolers and Spekman's
(1981) 9-11-year-old children showed reduced communi-
cation success when the interlocutors did not visually
share the same environment and when feedback was
 ROTH ~: SPEKMAN:Assessing Pragmatic Abilities: Part I
eliminated. The ability to deal with such environmental
changes is clearly related to a speaker's ability to assess
the listener's information needs.
Further, does a child recognize that rules governing
behavior may change in different social environments
such as home, playground, and classroom? Mehan (1976,
1979) has suggested that classrooms have unique systems
of rules which are frequently not explicitly stated but
which govern behavior. In one study, Mehan (1979)
videotaped students in a variety of classroom situations
and independently asked teachers to rate the students in
their classes. The total number of appropriate and inap-
propriate behaviors did not vary across the students.
However, students rated as "good" by the teachers were
those who displayed their appropriate behavior in the
~presence of the teacher and kept their inappropriate
behavior out of sight. The students not rated as "good"
did not make this differentiation; they performed inap-
propriate actions without regard to the teacher's presence
or absence.
Social Organization of Discourse
The final level of analysis involves the assessment of a
child's ability to function in, and contribute to, the ongo-
ing stream of discourse or conversation. Of necessity, this
involves a child functioning within both speaker and
listener roles and the ability to alternately assume the
responsibilities of each. Specifically, partners must ad-
dress one another, agree upon a topic, take turns develop-
ing it, and make their contributions intelligible, relevant,
truthful, unambiguous, and appropriate to the situation
and partner. Interlocutors must also be adept at initiating,
maintaining, terminating, and shifting topics and must be
facile at repairing instances of potential communication
breakdown and failure. The following variables represent
the essential components of discourse and may serve to
guide a clinician's observations in this area.
Socialized versus nonsocialized speech. Within a com-
munication situation, children engage in a variety of
verbal behaviors, only a portion of which can be consid-
ered conversational (Berninger & Garvey, 1981; Keenan,
1974). Speech that is addressed to the listener is consid-
ered social speech. It imposes some sort of obligation on
the listener to respond and is typically characterized by
being clearly produced, adapted to the listener, and by
attempted repairs in instances of breakdown. Another
kind of social verbal behavior, ritual verbal play, involves
mutual engagement between the partners, turn alterna-
tion, and contingent responses. In this type of speech, the
partners appear to be mutually engaged in word play.
This would include exchanges that utilize rhyming, allit-
eration, and poetic nonsense. Imitative sequences fall
into this category. Other verbal behaviors are considered
nonsocial in that they are not explicitly addressed to a
listener and thus the partner is not obliged to respond.
This category may include monologues, songs, rhymes,
individual sound play, and narratives. Nonsocial speech
behaviors may at times serve to initiate conversation, but
7
the speaker does not attempt to repair when a reply is not
received.
Attempts to quantify such behaviors may involve deter-
mining the proportion of total utterances falling into each
category. Currently, it is not possible to specify the
proportional use of each type of speech that would be
considered normal or atypical. All types occur naturally
and normally, but use is determined, at least in part, by a
child's age and other personal variables as well as the
communicative context in which the utterance occurs.
Turn taking and talking time. There is a large body of
evidence that demonstrates that very early mother-infant
interactions involve synchronous alternations of turns
and temporally linked behaviors (Bruner, 1975, 1977;
Kaye, 1977; Lewis & Freedle, 1973; Sander, 1977). Turn-
taking behavior is also seen in the highly ritualized and
repetitive games played between mother and child. Thus,
the presence or absence of turn taking should be docu-
mented. The nature of the turn itself can be analyzed.
Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) suggested each turn
should consist of an acknowledgment of the preceding
utterance, a primary contribution of the present speaker,
and an indication of turn allocation. Thus, beyond the
presence of turn taking, the manner in which turns are
constructed and allocated may also be examined. For
example, turn allocation techniques include asking ques-
tions, manipulating intonational contour, and pausing.
Berninger and Garvey (1981) suggested that a pause of
greater than 1 second signals the speaker's intent to
transfer the speaking floor. Further, an indication of
whether a conversation is dominated by one of the
participants or is more egalitarian in nature can be ob-
tained by quantifying the number of times each partner
talks and the proportion of total time that each child holds
the conversational floor.
Conversational initiation. Here one is interested in
determining whether a child initiates conversational
topics, initiation strategies, and the outcome (success or
failure) of initiation attempts. Mueller (1972) identified
several variables thought to be related to the success or
failure of a message in dyads of preschool children:
articulation clarity, grammatical completeness and form,
social adaptation, use of attention-getting devices (e.g.,
"Hey," "Susan, ..."), the degree to which content is
relevant to ongoing activities and listener interests, eye
contact, and physical proximity. Although securing a
partner's attention was the best overall predictor of suc-
cess in receiving a reply, the other variables all contribut-
ed to the outcome.
Conversational maintenance. According to Grice
(1975), conversational partners follow four social conven-
tions: being truthful, being relevant, being brief, and
staying on topic. Maintenance of a topic or conversation is
generally dependent upon the contingency of a response
to a preceding message. Bloom, Rocissano, and Hood
(1976) and Keenan (1975) have suggested that contingent
utterances may be examined by differentiating between
those that merely maintain the conversation (e.g., repeti-
tion or specific response to a question) and those that
maintain the topic as well as add new information. Con-
8 Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders
tingent responses of the first type serve to maintain the
topic of conversation, but they may do so only minimally
with the conversational responsibility returning very
quickly to the other partner. Simultaneous speech in the
form of "yeah," "uh-huh," and "okay," while someone
else is talking, also serves to keep the conversation going
but without transferring the conversational floor. Nonver-
bal devices such as head nods, facial expressions, and
body postures may also serve this function.
Topics may be maintained with responses other than
simply answering questions or adding new information.
Listeners can also ask questions of their own. A particular
type of contingent response, the contingent query, eon-
sists of unsolicited questions used by a listener to indi-
cate confusion or the need for previous messages to be
elaborated, clarified, or repeated (Garvey, 1977). Exam-
ples include "Huh?", "What do you mean?", or "What
color did you say?" Thus, contingent queries play a
crucial role in maintaining conversations by explicitly
noting instances of potential communication failure
which may then be repaired. An assessment of a child's
use of contingent queries may provide considerable infor-
mation beyond that regarding mastery of interrogative
forms. It can provide insights with respect to the child's
ongoing monitoring of the conversation, the child's sensi-
tivity to ambiguous or confusing messages, the strategies
available for signaling confusion, and the explicitness
with which the request for clarification is made (e.g.,
"Huh?" vs. "What time did you say you'd be home?").
On-topic exchanges. Counter to Piaget's (1926) notion
that preschool children are egocentric and therefore en-
gage almost exclusively in collective monologues, it has
been overwhelmingly demonstrated that young children
do contribute to conversations with both adults and peers
(Bates, 1975; Camaioni, 1977; Garvey, 1975; Keenan,
1974; Keenan & Schieffelin, 1976; Mueller, 1972; Sachs,
1977; Shatz & Gelman, 1973). Bloom et al. (1976), and
Keenan and Sehieffelin (1976) have studied the number
of turns over which young children can maintain a topic
and have found it to be an extremely variable phenome-
non. Their data suggest that adult-child conversations
tend to be maintained over a larger number of turns when
the child initiates the topic and when the conversational
foens is an object present in the environment.
To assess on-topic exchanges, it is recommended that
conversations be divided into units composed of utter-
ances focused on the same topic. Although the establish-
ment of specific criteria for determining topic continuity
is difficult, one can look for a consistent and unifying
theme (one or more related propositions) and contingent
responses. Once such units have been identified, it is
possible to examine the number of exchanges over which
a topic is maintained. If a child has difficulty staying on
topic, an analysis of off-topic remarks may indicate some
pattern of error. For example, some children may consis-
tently produce remarks that are only tangentially related
to the partner's topic, indicating possible problems in
language comprehension. Others may produce comments
without regard for the topic on the floor, or, conversely,
may have difficulty switching to a new topic. Such behav-
49 2-11 February 1984
ior may indicate attentional problems of distractibility or
perseveration. Of course, each hypothesis would need to
be substantiated with additional evidenee.
Topic termination. We are unaware of any coding
system that specifically addresses termination strategies.
We are all familiar with the frustration felt when our
conversational partners change the subjeet before closure
has been reached on a particular topic. Thus, an analysis
might involve examining the point at which a topic is
concluded as well as the type and appropriateness of the
termination strategy used.
Conversational repairs. In any conversation communi-
cation breakdown can occur. Breakdowns result in inter-
ruptions in the exchange of information and necessitate
repair. Breakdowns that are not ultimately resolved result
in communication failure. We recommend that analysis of
communication breakdowns include information about:
1. Cause of breakdown: A variety of factors have been
identified that potentially result in communication
breakdown. These variables include (a) artieulatory
intelligibility, (b) volume, (c) completeness of informa-
tion, (d) degree of complexity, (e) appropriateness, (f)
relevance, (g) presence or absence of mutual attention,
(h) visual regard, and (i) presence or absence of mutual
desire (Garvey, 1975; Keenan & Schieffelin, 1976;
Mueller, 1972; Sachs, 1977).
2. Repair attempt: When an instance of communication
breakdown occurs, the presence or absence of a repair
attempt should be noted. Several investigators have
reported that normal and disordered children of vari-
ous ages frequently fail to make repair attempts even
when preceding messages are grossly inadequate
(Donahue, 1981; Markman, 1977, 1979; Spekman,
1979).
3. Repair initiator: The repair attempt can be self-initiat-
ed by the speaker, or it can be initiated by the listener
through the use of contingent queries and other indi-
cations of the need for additional information or clarifi-
cation.
4. Repair strategy: Repair strategies may be divided into
three major categories (Table 6). The first, utilized by
Clark and Andersen (1979) and Gallagher and Darnton
(1978), focuses on the linguistic structure of the strate-
gy used. The second, proposed by Garvey (1977),
looks at the content or the nature of the information
provided. Finally, it is our opinion that a variety- of
extralinguistie repair strategies may be used in con-
junction with verbal repairs. These three taxonomies
are not mutually exclusive; any one repair strategy
may be coded for form, content, and/or extralinguistie
information.
5. Outcome: The success of any of these strategies in
actually repairing breakdowns must also be consid-
ered. Some children may have difficulty selecting
appropriate repair strategies. For example, if a child
has made a lexical error, simply repeating the same
message more loudly and with contrasting stress will
not repair the breakdown. Moreover, the degree of
speeificity of the feedback given by the listener may
 ROTH • SPEKMAN:Assessing Pragmatic Abilities: Part 1 9

TABLE 6. Revision strategies.

Repair strategy Example

1. Linguistic structure
a. Phonologic "Where's that spoo'" ~ "Where's that spoon?"

b. Morphologic "He sleep" --~ "He sleeps in a bed."

"'She's" ~ "He's my daddy."

c. Lexical "'Cats" --9 "Big cats scare me."

"I got shoes" ~ "'new shoes."
d. Syntactic "Is that her" ~ "'That's her doll?"
"She has" ~ "These are her toys."

2. Linguistic content
a. Repetition "'I'm going to the store." ("What?")
"'I'm going to the store."
"'I'm going to the store." ("Where?")
"'To the store."

b. Confirmation "I have some cookies."

("Where? In the closet?")
"'Yes."
He never calls me. ("He doesn't?")
"'No."

c. Specification "I think I'll go there." ("Where?")

"'To the movies."
"He knows that woman." ("Who?")
"'That tall lady."

d. Elaboration "I have some cookies." ("Where?")

"'In the closet."
"I saw Harriet." ("When?")
"'Last night."

3. Extralinguistic
a. Pitch change
b. Stress
c. Volume change
d. Demonstration
Child talks at pitch different from earlier utterance.
"I want that magic tube."
Child whispers or talks louder for increased emphasis.
"Play the xylophone like this."
(child bangs on the xylophone)

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Received June 11, 1982
Accepted September 2, 1983
Requests for reprints should be sent to Froma P. Roth, Ph.D.,
Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of
Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
Assessing the Pragmatic Abilities of Children: Part 1. Organizational Framework and
Assessment Parameters

Froma P. Roth, and Nancy J. Spekman

J Speech Hear Disord 1984;49;2-11

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