Date of Award
6-1997
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
Department
Speech Pathology and Audiology
First Advisor
Dr. Nickola W. Nelson
Second Advisor
Dr. Lucille Hess
Third Advisor
Dr. Michael Clark
Fourth Advisor
Dr. David Dynak
Access Setting
Masters Thesis-Open Access
Abstract
This study was designed to compare the pragmatic skills of adolescents with and without learning disabilities as measured by a dramatization task. Seventeen high school students with learning disabilities and 17 normal-achieving high school students participated in this study. Twenty scenes were presented verbally to the participants who were instructed to act out the part of a character in each scene, making up the dialogue to fit the scene. The responses were scored for their pragmatic appropriateness and linguistic quality. Task reliability and validity analyses indicated that the dramatization task was an effective measure of key aspects of pragmatic skills.
Students with learning disabilities scored significantly lower for each of three pragmatic scores ( comprehension of the key concept, linguistic completeness, and paralinguistic and nonlinguistic appropriateness), while taking significantly longer to complete the task. With regard to linguistic quality, no significant differences were found between the two groups' for the three linguistic quality measures, mean length of utterance, number of different words, and total number of words.
Recommended Citation
Juergens, Amy L., "Assessing the Pragmatic Skills of Adolescents With and Without Learning Disabilities on a Dramatization Task" (1997). Masters Theses. 4211.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/4211