Paméla Filiatrault-Veilleux, assistant professor with the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department at the University of Alberta and Chantal Desmarais, professor in the Department of Rehabilitation at the Université Laval propose an interactive and standardized tool to assess  oral inferential comprehension skills of young children: the Inferential Comprehension in a Narrative - Assessment (ICNA)

Although understanding inferences is essential to the development of reading comprehension, tools developed in the French-speaking Quebec context were rare. To meet a need frequently expressed by speech-language pathologists, Paméla Filiatrault-Veilleux and Chantal Desmarais developed this tool, which includes an interactive PowerPoint to present to the child, a scoring grid, and an administration manual. The ÉCIR is the product of a rigorous clinical research process involving 121 children aged 3 to 6, and its content has been validated by several speech-language pathologists, researchers, and education professionals.

The ÉCIR is primarily aimed at speech therapists, but it will also be of interest to teachers and special education teachers who work with non-reading children aged 3 to 6.