Observational Questionnaire on Children’s Social Communication Abilities
Emanuela Leone Sciabolazza, Claudio Bartoli, Giovanni Masciarelli
Pragmatics refers to social use of language in context, and cognitive pragmatics alludes to the study of the mental states of those involved in communication. Many children with neurodevelopmental or acquired disorders show a deficit in one or more components of their pragmatic competencies. In this study, we present the development of a new instrument to assess the pragmatic abilities of children in the last two years of pre-school and during primary school: the Observational Questionnaire on Children’s Social Communication Abilities (Q-SCA). The questionnaire brings together the principles of cognitive pragmatics and is based on a study method of developmental pragmatics. It refers to conversational analysis as developed in the programme «Communication and Pragmatic skills Training» (CaPs-T). The Q-SCA consists of 24 items and is to be completed by teachers. The results obtained show that the Q-SCA is a useful instrument for recognising social communication abilities in the school context, also considering the high level of positive correlation between scores obtained on different items. Thanks to its structure, the Q-SCA can be deemed an easy to use instrument in the pre-school and primary school context and can be integrated into a wider assessment protocol of pragmatic abilities or within a screening project in the school environment.
Keywords
Pragmatics, Social communication, Assessment, Conversational analysis, Q-SCA.