Judgment of Pragmatic Abilities: A Story-Based Assessment in Adolescents

Abstract

Background: Adolescents start to understand nonliteral language and begin to use language to maintain social bonds in varying social contexts. Aim: This study aims to profile pragmatic judgment abilities in typically developing adolescents. Materials and Methods: The present study was conducted on 120 typically developing adolescents across the age range of 10–16 years. The formulated story consisted of 29 multiple-choice judgment questions to assess an adolescent's ability to judge the use of pragmatics skills by different characters in the story. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the groups determined by the one-way analysis of variance (F [5114] =4.83, P = 0.00). Conclusion: With increasing grades, adolescents spend a reasonable time socializing with peers and others, promoting the development of pragmatic skills. As children and adolescents grow, perceptions of others improve, along with their ability to identify the complexity of contentious topics and differing points of view.