"Putting things in context": literal and discourse approaches to comprehension assessment.
Research on receptive language development in typical children, especially as explicated in a classic paper by Robin Chapman, is reviewed. These findings raise three challenges for clinicians assessing comprehension in children with language disorders: (1) contrary to popular wisdom, comprehension does not always precede production in a simple step-by-step way; (2) comprehension is a private event; indicators of comprehension must be used to assess it, and these indicators can be misleading; and (3) children with subtle comprehension deficits may do well on standardized tests that are not sensitive to their difficulties with real-time discourse. Some strategies for addressing these challenges, as well as a framework for assessing comprehension, are offered.
Paul
R
R
Department of Communications Disorders, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven 06515, USA.
D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D014705:Verbal Behavior