Assessing Difficulty Maintaining Topics and Conversational Turns

Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF) Preschool-3

• • This assessment can be used with children aged 3:0-6:11 and assesses areas of language deemed necessary for preschool children in order to meet the language demands of the classroom

  • The CELF Preschool-3 has a Pragmatics Profile & Pragmatic Activities Checklist which evaluates social aspects of communication which include topic maintenance and appropriate conversational turn taking

  • The Pragmatic Activities Checklist is supplementary, and used to observe functional communication skills during conversational interactions to identify both verbal and nonverbal behaviors that may adversely influence academic and social communication

  • The Pragmatics Profile subtest is used to identify verbal and nonverbal pragmatic skills that might influence social and academic communication in context 

  • Strength: these subtests allow for the administrator to observe the child's pragmatic behaviors in a more naturalistic and observational way, rather than having the child answer questions from a stimulus book

  • Weakness: results can be somewhat subjective and may not capture the child as a whole, there isn't specific scoring for just difficulty with topic maintenance and appropriate conversational turn taking so the administrator has to use their best judgement when assessing these aspects

Preschool Language Scales 5th Edition (PLS-5) 

• • The PLS-5 is a developmental language assessment that comprehensively covers pre-verbal skills, interaction-based skills, emerging language, and early literacy. This assessment can be used to assess children from birth to 7:11

  • This assessment covers a wide range of topics in both expressive language and auditory comprehension. In regards to topic maintenance and appropriate conversational turn taking, the PLS-5 assesses joint attention which is necessary for building language skills, using a variety of words and constructions for pragmatic functions, and answering questions logically

  • Strength: the administrator can assess the child's ability to maintain topics and appropriately take conversational turns through their response to the prompted questions and test stimuli. For example, if the administrator asks the child "What toy is round and bounces? You play catch with it", and they respond with a story about a bounce house and their friend's birthday party next week, the child is not truly maintaining the topic or answering the target question which is a pragmatic skill

  • Weakness: the assessment doesn't directly assess topic maintenance and appropriate conversational turn taking, the administrator will have to look for patterns in the child's responses throughout the evaluation

Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised (SUGAR)

• • SUGAR is a valid, evidenced-based language analysis method that collects 50-utterances from a child and analyzes components such as Mean Length of Utterance, Words/Sentence, and Total Number of Words. Norms begin at age 3:0. The administrator can also calculate type-token ratio which measures vocabulary variation. This could informally assess how many topics the child covers within the 50 utterances

  • Strength: the language sample can be obtained during play and may allow the administrator to gather observations about the child's ability to maintain topics and appropriately take conversational turns across 50-utterances. The administrator can listen to the recording for instances of the child not taking conversational turns or staying on topic 

  • Weakness: this does not directly look at topic maintenance and appropriate conversational turn taking, but collecting the sample could provide you with information on the repetition of words they used and how long the child's utterances are about a certain topic

Alternative, access, and or societally based approach for difficulty maintaining topics/conversational turns

Communication partners such as caregivers and preschool teachers could provide children with alternative, accessible approaches to make language more accessible for children who have difficulty maintaining topics and taking appropriate conversational turns. This could include allowing the child to expressive themselves verbally even if the difficulty maintaining the topic is a challenge. The caregiver or other communication partner could give verbal cues and model appropriate conversational turn-taking so the child can see what a pragmatically appropriate conversation entails. A societally based approach could include providing the child with a cue card with a visual, such as the topic maintenance railroad, that they could have access to in environments where they'll be having conversations with peers and various communication partners. Another approach is immersing these children in environments where they'll see typical patterns of topic maintenence and appropriate conversational turns. Increased exposure helps these skills develop!