The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged Children

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Abstract

Background: Definitional skills represent the ability to express words’ meaning using canonical formats (i.e., ‘a cat is a domestic animal that meows’). This complex linguistic production requires lexical, semantic, morphosyntactic, pragmatic and metalinguistic abilities, all implicitly mastered in language listening comprehension. Listening comprehension has a crucial role also in the cognitive linguistic mediated development, especially in promoting future reading comprehension. The relationship between definitional skills and listening comprehension is an underinvestigated topic.

Purpose: The aim of the present study was to explore this relationship in preschoolers and in school-aged children (first and third graders).

Method: Fifty-seven Italian children (age range: 44-106 months) were individually administered both a definition task, that requires to produce the definition of noun, verbs, and adjectives, scored by the Scale of Definitional Competence (Co.De. Scale), and the Test for Oral Reading Comprehension (TOR) that assesses textual and inferential listening comprehension via two brief stories.

Results: We found preliminary evidence of a bidirectional relationship between definitional skills and listening comprehension both in preschoolers and in school-aged children. Age explains a significant portion of variance of definitional skills (over listening comprehension); whereas definitional skills account for listening comprehension (in particular, textual comprehension).

Conclusion: The results are discussed in the light of the bidirectional link emerged from the analyses, promoting an initial reflection on the complex relationship between a metalinguistic ability (i.e., definitional skills) and listening comprehension processes both involved in school achievement.

About the authors

Caterina Artuso

University of Genova

Author for correspondence.
Email: caterina.artuso@unige.it
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6938-3693
Italy, Genova

Elena Torelli

University of Urbino Carlo Bo

Email: caterina.artuso@unige.it
Italy, Urbino

Carmen Belacchi

University of Urbino Carlo Bo

Email: caterina.artuso@unige.it
Italy, Urbino

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