An investigation of the comprehension and production of requests in normal and language-disordered children.
The ability to comprehend and produce requests was investigated in a group of 15 3-5-yr old normally developing children and 15 5-7-yr-old language-disordered children. The requests were examined under two conditions: 1) during observations in a naturalistic setting; 2) while participating in an experimental task. An important developmental shift in the ability to accurately discriminate between polite and less-polite requests occurred between the ages of 3 and 4 yr for the normals and 5 and 6 yr for the language-disordered children. There appears to be preliminary support for the hypothesis of an underlying pragmatic deficit influencing the communicative performance of some children in this population, accounting for differential abilities in producing, comprehending, and modifying requesting strategies to fit a given communicative situation.
D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics; D013060:Speech