The Pragmatic Assessments in Children: A Narrative Review

One of the important areas of language is pragmatics, which describes the correct use of language for social interaction. Since tests are tools for quantitation of speech and language abilities, they are needed in order to assess, screen, describe, diagnose, and treat various aspects of language. The aim of this study was to review the existing tests in the area of language pragmatics and collect data about their subtests, scoring, administration, age range, and finally their application in clinical and research contexts in children.

In order to review the common tests of language pragmatics, an electronic search through Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Medline, Google Scholar, and Ovid databases was done between the years 2000 to 2020. The keywords were “Pragmatics”, “Language”, “Means”, “Tests”, “Tools”, “Diagnosis”, “Measurement”, and “Evaluation”. The inclusion criteria were access to the full text of the article, and the article language (either English or Persian).

In this study, 18 tests and a checklist were reterived from 25 studies for further study. Among them, only four tests and one checklist were for sole assessment of pragmatics and 14 other tests were for assesing all aspects of language.

Some tests have recently been used more commonly due to the specialization of their subtests. Reviewing language pragmatics tests shows that the Test of Pragmatic Language-Second Edition (TOPL-2) was the most acceptable test due to the assessment of comprehension-expression areas, standardization for healthy children or children with disorders, translation into several languages, and high psychometric characteristics; however, the use of multiple tests is recommended for a comprehensive and integrated assessment.