Estimating the pragmatic language abilities in Indian adolescents between 10 and 16 Years of Age: Using contextually flooded visual scenes

Objectives: The assessment of pragmatic language in adolescents mainly focuses on using academic and other communicative contexts that they are largely exposed to. Considering the lesser focus laid on aspects of pragmatic language in India, the current study aims to profile the context-related pragmatic language abilities in typically developing adolescents using ingenious visual-based scenes. Methods: The participants were 10- to 16-year-old allocated into six age groups with 1-year intervals. The targeted context-related parameters were physical context-setting (PCS), physical context-event (PCE), audience relationship (AR), audience number (AN), audience mood (AM), and context total (CT). The study was carried out in three phases. Phase I included the development of the stimuli (stimuli preparation, content validation, and pilot study); Phase II involved the task administration; while, Phase III involved the data and statistical analysis. Results: The results have been discussed based on the age-wise comparisons of the total scores received in PCS, PCE, AR, AN, AM, and CT. The results of the Kruskal-Wallis test indicated an overall good level of significance (p < .05) across the 6 groups for all six parameters. Though Mann Whitney Tests indicated a poor level of significance (p > .05) between certain groups across certain parameters, a good level of significance (p < .05) was obtained when viewing the groups from a cognitive perspective (10-11, 12-14, and 15 years). Conclusion: This study delivers a novel tool in understanding pragmatic developmental trends in Indian children, laying new paths towards the assessment of adolescents with language disorders.