Development of Cognitive Linguistic Assessment Protocol for Children

Abstract

Our verbal behavior is determined by what we know, by what we perceive and think in a given circumstance and by the cognitive operations in production and comprehension. The cognitive processes are usually described in terms of discrete units of attention, perception, memory, concept formation and representation. There is an intricate relationship between cognition and language, especially the cognitive processes like attention, memory and organization are important for comprehending and producing language. Therefore a speech pathologist plays a very important role to assess these cognitive Linguistic skills and to render appropriate intervention for the clinical population Lacking these skills. The aim of the present study was to develop a cognitive Linguistic assessment protocol for children. The domains involved in assessment of cognitive Linguistic skills are attention, memory, problem solving. Each domain was assessed in two modalities - auditory and visual modality. It was found that the development of cognitive linguistic skills in children follows a developmental trend. The results also suggested that as the complexity of the stimulus advanced there was a decline in the performance of the children. The present study therefore was an attempt towards this direction in the Indian context. The study was aimed to develop an assessment protocol to assess the cognitive Linguistic abilities in Kannada speaking children.