Informal Pragmatics Assessment of Social Communication

The Evolving Definition of Pragmatics

Informal pragmatics assessment of social communication should have both a receptive and an expressive component. Using a video based assessment tool allows the evaluator to efficiently obtain information about what the student understands about the skill as well as how the student uses it.

The definition of pragmatics has evolved to recognize the receptive and expressive components over time. Dell Hymes (1971) bare bones definition: “Knowing when to say what to whom and how much” was a good start. Roever noted the receptive and expressive constructs of pragmatics in 2009, stating that being pragmatically competent had two prerequisites: to understand and produce sociopragmatic meanings with pragmalinguistic conventions. Lacking one of these results in pragmatic failure (Roever, 2009). Lavi, 2019 used the term Pragmatic Judgement and defined it as the ability to appropriately understand and use language. She stated receptive pragmatic judgement was the ability to identify correct and incorrect responses in a social context. Expressive pragmatic judgement was defined as verbally providing appropriate responses in given situations.

Informal Pragmatics Assessment: Receptive and Expressive Components

If you examine your social communication sessions, you are probably already combining both receptive and expressive components into your social communication intervention sessions. Do you ask your students questions about a social scenario first? You’re tapping into their receptive understanding of the skill.

• What’s good about it?
• What could be improved?
• What’s happening in the situation?
• What would you do differently?
• Why do you think this way?

Do you introduce the vocabulary related to the social skill you are teaching? Do you make sure they understand it as well as define it? Then, do you move on to practice and use of the skill? Do you tier or scaffold the skills or steps involved in the social skill? If any of these tasks are part of your social communication sessions, you understand that pragmatics has both a receptive and expressive component.

Okay, so how do we assess these receptive and expressive components during an informal pragmatics assessment? In some of my social communication products, I include a skill specific true/false “knowledge check” so the user can get a general ideas of what the student understands about the skill. Each pragmatic skill we teach is complicated, with it’s own lingo, sequences, examples, paralinguistics, steps and ways it interfaces with other skills. For example, if you teach students how to politely disagree with their peers, this is a skill that overlaps with both assertive communication and conflict resolution.

Informal Pragmatics Assessment: any Social Mistakes?

Another way is to use video based assessment tools by present photographs or video clips of social interactions and questioning students about the social appropriateness of the presented scenarios. I use the term “social mistake” and I present it from a growth mindset approach, as in “we all have social misunderstandings, everyone makes social mistakes. As with all mistakes, let’s learn from them.” Then have the student demonstrate how they would handle this social situation. Your pragmatic probes might be as follows.

Probe for Understanding and Use of Social Communication Skills

In my social communication informal video-based assessment, I start out some sections asking the student to identify if there are any social mistakes present in a video clip, and have them back up their answer with specifics about what was positive and not so positive about the social situation. It’s important that they explain their answer so the examiner gets a sense of their level of understanding of the skill. If they can’t explain it, use a pragmatic probe. Then, I ask them to tell me how they would act or what they would say in this situation. If there was a social mistake, how would they fix it? Show me! This is the expressive portion of the task and it gives the examiner an opportunity to assess not just the language that was used, but also the expression of paralinguistic skills! This type of informal assessment will give you insight into where the student is breaking down and where your intervention should be focused. You can also look for patterns that provide insight into if the student understands the skill but can’t correctly use it, making it more of a use or practice issue.

Please note: this is an informal pragmatics assessment tool, not a standardized assessment. It is most useful for progress monitoring, IEP preparation, intervention planning and goal writing. In many states, formal test scores are needed to determine eligibiity for IEP services. In these cases, I’d recommend the CAPS, Clinical Assessment of Pragmatic Skills.

Here are the 4 primary areas assessed in this video-based assessment product:

1. Basic communicative functions such as greeting or making a request.
2. Conversation skills such as initiating and maintaining a conversation and topic appropriateness.
3. Functions for making emotional connections such as making a promise or supporting a peer. These are the communicative functions that are necessary for friendship building and maintaining relationships.
4. Understanding and use of paralinguistic skills. This section contains understanding and expression of 7 emotions, and examines higher order skills such as sarcasm, understanding deceit, understanding idioms and perspective-taking skills.

Why Video based Assessment of Social Communication?

In a perfect world, we could observe our students and clients in a variety of social settings, with like-minded peers, but we all live within time and situation constraints. Video modeling has become a common intervention tool for social (and other) skills and provides a more dynamic process similar to actual social interactions or at least better than static images. A quick search on ASHA provides support for this intervention. According to Scott Bellini and Jennifer Akullian, video modeling for social skills is considered an evidence based intervention. In a 2015 ASHA Leader interview, video modeling researcher, Teresa Cardon, finds that video modeling is more effective at achieving target social communication behaviors than live-modeling situations. If we are going to use video modeling as an intervention, it makes sense to also use video clips during the assessment process.

Writing IEP Goals with Receptive and Expressive Components

So, once we’ve used the vide based assessment to check the receptive and expressive components of a student’s pragmatic skills, what about the IEP goals? Here is an example of an IEP goal for social communication with both receptive and expressive components:

After viewing a video clip of a social interaction, Jerry will a) identify the presence or absence of a social mistake, providing 2 clues to support his response, in 80% of trials, and b) demonstrate use of the social communication skill with appropriate language and facial expression/body language/paralinguistics in 80% of trials as measured by the SLP over three data points.

As you progress monitor your student’s performance with the goal, you note that they show understanding of the skill and use the appropriate language, but struggle with expressing the accurate tone of voice and body language. Then you know where to focus your next IEP goal: use of paralinguistics. You might also find my IEP goal bank for social communication helpful.

These blog posts might also be helpful:

Social language assessment young children: Language Use Inventory

Self-assessment of social skills

Using youtube for social skills interventions

References

Hymes, D. (1971). On communicative competence. In Pride, J. & J. Holmes (eds.), Sociolinguistics, (pp. 269–293). London: Penguin.

Lavi, A. (2019) Video-Based AssessmentTechniques of Pragmatics (Verbal and Nonverbal Language) Speech Pathology.com

Roever, C. (2009). Teaching and Testing Pragmatics. In M. H. Long & C. J. Doughty (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Teaching, (560-577). Oxford: Blackwell.

Teresa Cardon, ASHA Leader, 2015