The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged Children
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...
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National Research University Higher School of Economics
2025-03-01
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| Series: | Journal of Language and Education |
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| Online Access: | https://jle.hse.ru/article/view/19867 |
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| author | Катерина Артусо Elena Torelli Carmen Belacchi |
| author_facet | Катерина Артусо Elena Torelli Carmen Belacchi |
| author_sort | Катерина Артусо |
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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.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-7d83d63a91394be282b920e37072ee3e |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2411-7390 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-03-01 |
| publisher | National Research University Higher School of Economics |
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| series | Journal of Language and Education |
| spelling | doaj-art-7d83d63a91394be282b920e37072ee3e2025-08-20T02:15:37ZengNational Research University Higher School of EconomicsJournal of Language and Education2411-73902025-03-0111110.17323/jle.2025.19867The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged ChildrenКатерина Артусо0Elena Torelli1Carmen Belacchi2University of Genova, ItalyUniversity of Urbino Carlo Bo, ItalyUniversity of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy 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. https://jle.hse.ru/article/view/19867definitional skillslistening comprehensionmetalinguistic abilitylanguage development |
| spellingShingle | Катерина Артусо Elena Torelli Carmen Belacchi The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged Children Journal of Language and Education definitional skills listening comprehension metalinguistic ability language development |
| title | The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged Children |
| title_full | The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged Children |
| title_fullStr | The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged Children |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged Children |
| title_short | The Relationship between Definitional Skills and Listening Comprehension: Preliminary Evidence from Preschoolers to School-Aged Children |
| title_sort | relationship between definitional skills and listening comprehension preliminary evidence from preschoolers to school aged children |
| topic | definitional skills listening comprehension metalinguistic ability language development |
| url | https://jle.hse.ru/article/view/19867 |
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