Pragmatic Assessment Across the Life Span
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Social Communication AssessmentFree preview
What You Are Measuring
Pragmatics is the use of language and nonverbal communication in context: what to say, to whom, when, and how, and what others mean beyond their words. It sits inside social communication together with social interaction, social cognition, and language processing. Pragmatic assessment samples behavior in context and asks two questions: is communication working for this person's goals, and whose norms are being applied.
Pragmatic Development Milestones
| Age | Expected pragmatic behaviors |
|---|---|
| Birth to 8 months | Perlocutionary stage (Bates): adults assign meaning to cries and gaze; mutual gaze and vocal turn-taking in routines |
| 8 to 12 months | Illocutionary stage: intentional gesture and vocalization; joint attention, showing, giving, pointing; protoimperatives (requesting) and protodeclaratives (sharing attention) |
| 12 to 18 months | Locutionary stage: first words for requesting, protesting, greeting, commenting, answering |
| 18 months to 3 years | Two or three turns on a topic; repairs by repeating; asks and answers questions |
| 3 to 5 years | Maintains topic; repairs by revising; politeness markers; simplifies speech for a younger listener; presupposition; first-order theory of mind (false belief) by about 4 to 5 |
| 6 to 8 years | Second-order theory of mind; repairs by adding information; early sarcasm, idioms, and word-meaning jokes; register shifts for teachers versus peers |
| 9 to 12 years | Figurative language, multiple meanings, slang; detects deception and hints; group conversation and persuasion |
| Adolescence and adulthood | Complex perspective taking; persuasive and argumentative discourse; irony; digital pragmatics; register and politeness strategies |
High-Yield: Protodeclarative pointing and joint attention emerge between about 9 and 15 months and are the pragmatic behaviors most tied to early autism screening. Their absence by about 12 to 18 months is a referral flag, confirmed with a screener such as the M-CHAT at 18 and 24 months; their presence does not rule autism out.
The rest of this outline 7
- Assessment Approaches
- Discourse Analysis Essentials
- Social Communication Disorder Versus Autism
- Acquired Pragmatic Disorders: Right Hemisphere and TBI
- Interpreting Through a Neurodiversity-Affirming Lens
- Common Traps
- Sources to Know
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