Learning the social use of language, which technically is known as pragmatics, is fundamental in early years development, because it is when children acquire the skills necessary for dealing with situations in everyday life. A study developed at UPF, based on a sample group of one hundred Catalan-speaking girls and boys between 3 and 4 years old, outlines a new classroom intervention model for improving pragmatic abilities when expressing information.

This line of research began as a result of the doctoral thesis "The developing architecture of expressive pragmatics in preschoolers: Multimodal and structural language trumps social cognition", by Mariia Pronina, researcher in the Prosodic Research Group (GrEP) within the Linguistics Research Unit (UR-Ling) in UPF's Department of Translation and Language Sciences, and directed by Pilar Prieto, GrEP coordinator. This line of research is continuing with other studies currently underway in the same research group.

Mariia Pronina, researcher from the Prosodic Research Group (GrEP) says: "the study uses a multimodal perspective, which analyses the relationship there may be between the expressive pragmatic abilities of children and different factors like the structural elements of language such as lexis and syntax; the multimodal elements of language such as gestures or prosody, and social cognition skills".

The thesis focuses on expressive pragmatics related to the production of messages, which until now has been researched much less in preschoolers than the reception of messages. In order to examine this issue, researcher Mariia Pronina describes the focus of the thesis thus: "The study uses a multimodal perspective, which analyses the relationship there may be between the children’s expressive pragmatic skills and different factors like the structural elements of language such as lexis and syntax; the multimodal elements of language such as gestures or prosody, and the children's social cognition skills". Social cognition is linked to empathy and the ability to understand the emotions and mental states of other interlocutors. Pronina adds that this holistic, interdisciplinary focus is innovative, because until now these disciplines were mainly studied separately.

The results of the study show that the expressive pragmatics of three and four-year-olds are more closely related to their ability to use structural language (lexis, and especially syntax) and non-verbal elements (e.g. gestures, prosody) than with social cognition abilities. Pronina explains one of the possible reasons why social cognition only has a scant relationship to expressive pragmatics with this group of children: "When children start going to school, just when they are starting to socialise and relate to other children of the same age, ... is a stage when social cognition skills are only just starting to develop. But this relationship can change over time and can manifest differently in children of different ages". The results of the thesis also point to other possible explanations, such as the fact that it focuses on the expressive pragmatics of preschoolers, whereas with receptive pragmatics, social cognition could play a more important role even at the preschool stage.

Mariia Pronina, researcher from the Prosodic Research Group (GrEP) says: "The fact that a child makes more gestures might mean that he or she is less able to organise his or her speech. Gestures are very important for analysing children's development and detecting disorders"

On the subject of body language in particular, the study also reaches some relevant conclusions. The precision of gestures has a positive correlation to expressive pragmatic abilities, while their frequency has a negative correlation. "The fact that a child makes more gestures than normal might mean that he or she is less able to organise his or her speech. Gestures are very important for analysing children's development and detecting disorders", explains Pronina.

The thesis is subdivided into four different studies (the first three analyse the relationship between expressive pragmatics and the structural elements of language, prosody and gesturing, respectively, and the fourth considers new classroom intervention methods) and the global results are relevant for improving child education and clinical practice.

In particular, the study proposes a new classroom intervention model, implemented by educational professionals, which consists of telling the children stories with characters who go through different situations, after which the boys and girls have to say how they would feel if they were the character in the story. There are two types of session: in one, the central (emotional and cognitive) terms of the story are worked on solely using structural language skills (lexis and syntax) while with the other type, they practise them by using a combination of all multimodal skills (gestures and prosody included).  The efficacy of both approaches has already been demonstrated with groups of preschoolers in two educational centres in Barcelona, which make up the study sample. However, both Pronina and thesis director and GrEP coordinator, Pilar Prieto, are more partial to the multimodal intervention approach, which they consider to be more appropriate and engaging for three and four-year-olds.

Pilar Prieto, GrEP coordinator says: "narrative and oral skills can be worked on very effectively in preschool education, by doing this in a multimodal way, that is, using both the body and the voice, as well as language. The study explains how to use this approach, in which the children talk about their emotions. This all has a very positive effect on children"

Prieto highlights the contributions that the study makes in the field of preschool education:"it shows how in preschool education, narrative and oral skills can be worked on very effectively by doing this in a multimodal way, that is, using both the body and the voice as well as language. The study explains how to use this approach, in which the children talk about their emotions. This all has a very positive effect on children" In fact, to support teachers to be able to work not only on expressive pragmatics, but also emotional and sociopragmatic skills in the classroom, the GrEP shares educational materials openly on the website "Entrenem les emocions" (Let’s train our emotions).

In clinical practice, Prieto explains that the study's results could contribute to improving the expressive pragmatic skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

A new test to measure expressive pragmatic skills in preschoolers is available for future studies and for professionals in the educational and clinical sectors

The study also makes some relevant methodological observations. Faced with a lack of pre-existing methodological tools for studying expressive pragmatics in preschoolers, the author of the thesis has created a new system: the Audiovisual Pragmatic Test (APT), to assess children's ability to use language socially in a series of everyday contexts. From now on, the APT will be freely available for researchers or professionals in the educational or clinical sector who might need it, and it also has the potential to be applied to other languages or for children of different ages.