Why questions: (Total of 24) (Total of 20) 12 a) Explaining obstacles

to action and experience 6 5 b) Cause-effect/ Prevention 6 5 c) Justifying a decision 6 5 d) Construction of objects 6 5

3) Making Predictions 11 8 6 (sections 3 and 7

from pilot combined)

4) Formulating Solutions 24 21 12

5) Explaining Inferences 30 22 12

6) Making Inferences from Short Passages

16 16 10

7) Taking Other Perspective 10 8

8) Situation-Based Emotions 16 16 16 (final section 7)

9) Desire-Based Emotions 8 8

10) Belief-Based Emotions 24 (12 x 2) 8 8 (final section 8)

11) Mental State Verbs 14 14 12 (final section 9)

12) Strange Stories 20 16 12 (final section 10)

13) Faux Pas 24 18 12 (final section 11)

14) Idioms 38 25 20 (final section 12)

Total 269 210 140

Seeappendix xfor a copy of the final HICIT form.The sections are given in table 2.1 above.

The test is not intended to be a vocabulary test so lower frequency words such as ‘enamel’ and ‘pedestrian crossing’ can be explained if the child asks. In section 2 the ‘Why Questions’ 11 and 12 are presented in the following way on the test response form:

11. Why are teeth covered in enamel not cotton wool?

(NB If the child asks what enamel is you can say: ‘The stuff on the outside of teeth’) 12. Why do we need pedestrian crossings on roads?

(NB If the child asks what a pedestrian crossing is you can say: ‘Like a zebra crossing’).

The test is also not intended to tax auditory memory so as many repetitions as were needed of any question could be requested. Interestingly however, Paris and Upton (1976) and Oakhill (1984) (both in Adams et al, 2001)found that developmental changes in the ability to infer were not due solely to increased memory capacity. The pilot study was carried out purely by the researcher so the administration

instructions are minimal. The final test instructions are detailed and specific to allow other testers (including MMU SLT students who carried out some of the final

assessments) to carry it out in a standardised manner. These are given below: Instructions to testers

Start by telling the child: ‘I have got lots of questions to ask you. You may not know all the answers and it is fine to say ‘I don’t know’ if you do not know the answer to any question’.

Say that some questions have more than one right answer.

Tell the older children (year 3 onwards) that a lot of the questions might be very easy for them.

Tell the child you can repeat each question as many times as he/she needs you to. If the child gives an idiosyncratic response (eg Section 2, Q6 ‘Why can’t you read in the dark?’: ‘Because I didn’t eat my carrots’, Q7 ‘Why are windows made out of glass and not out of bricks?’: ‘The Georgians had bricks in their windows to avoid paying window tax’; Section 4, Q11 ‘How could you find out what your teacher looked like when she/he was a little girl?: ‘Go back in time’; Section 5, Q3 ‘How do you know that someone is angry?’: ‘In a cartoon they would have steam coming out of their ears’) prompt them with ‘Yes, but what about in real life/ nowadays?’

If you think the child has partially answered a question, prompt with ‘Anything else?’ NOT with ‘Why?

For example: Section 2, Q4 Tester ‘Why mustn’t you play with matches?’: Child ‘Because they’re dangerous’; Tester ‘Anything else?’

Section 5 ‘How do you know that....?’ If the child answers ‘Because they tell you’ for any of these questions prompt with ‘Yes, and how else do you know?’

Question 8. ‘How do you know that someone has got toothache?’ If the child replies ‘they go to the dentist’ repeat the question stressing the ‘you’ (Yes, but how do YOU know they have got toothache?)

This is a verbal test so keep the test form out of sight as much as possible so the child does not try to read the questions.

Write down the child’s exact verbal response to each of the following questions. If he/she uses gesture to answer some questions describe the gestures used.

2.4.3 Development of the test marking criteria

Letts and Leinonen (2001)point out that there can be a wide range of acceptable answers to inferential comprehension questions responses and that children can go through a logical inference process and come up with an answer that is different from the expected ones.

Adams et al (2009)carried out a pilot study of their Assessment of Comprehension and Expression 6-11 sub-test questions on twenty children with typically developing language and 20 children with language impairments. The aim for the Inferential Comprehension sub-test was to decide on the range of acceptable and unacceptable responses, as decided by a panel of five experienced speech and language therapists. Answers were considered to be unacceptable if they were unrelated to the question, related but imprecise or they demonstrated a lack of inferential understanding. A final exhaustive list of acceptable and a list of unacceptable responses was constructed which was then developed into a scoring guide used for the final assessment. This is given in a table in their test manual, p37-38. For their items 1-4 the scores are 0 for an unacceptable response and 1 for an acceptable response. Items 5-8 elicit more elaborate responses so are scored 0 for an unacceptable response, 1 for an acceptable response and 2 for two or more acceptable responses from their table. Item 9 gets a score of 2 if the child produces an acceptable response which includes justification and 0 if not. Filiatrault-Veilleux et al (2015) support Adams et al’s (2009) 0-2 point classification of the types of responses given by children, claiming it leads to a more nuanced discrimination of a child’s performance. However, the current researcher considered that 1 acceptable answer should be sufficient to get maximum marks. She therefore opted to stick with the simpler 1/0 (correct/ incorrect) scoring system using very comprehensive and wide-ranging marking criteria for what count as acceptable responses.

The total number of test questions in the final HICIT is 140 so the maximum total score possible is 140.

The acceptable answers for each section of the test vary from single word, one correct response only, to short phrases or sentences with many acceptable answers per question. This is represented in table 2.2below:

Table 2.2 Summary of the types of answers required in the HICIT Single word answers. Only 1 correct response. Choice of 2 (happy/sad) Single word answers. Only 1 correct response: Choice of 3: (Yes/No/ Maybe) Single word answers. Only 1 correct response. Choice of 4 (happy, sad, angry, scared) Single word answers. Multiple acceptable responses Short phrase/ sentence response. Multiple acceptable responses 8. Belief

emotions 9. Mental state verbs 7. Situation emotions 1. Deductions 11. Faux pas 2. Why Questions 3. Predictions 4. Solutions 5. Inferences 6. Passages 10. Strange Stories 12. Idioms The range of acceptable scores expanded over the course of the Pilot and Final study as children introduced new examples. Local dialectal and colloquial expressions were fully accepted. For example ‘narky’ for ‘annoyed’, ‘they’re shiny on their head’ for ‘sweating’, ‘get a wiggle on’ for ‘get your skates on’. Even some unique creative terms were allowed, eg Section 2, Q10: ‘Why shouldn’t you agree to take a lift in a car from people you don’t know?’ A 5 year-old child’s response ‘cos they might stranger-danger you.’ See appendix xifor the final marking criteria.

.

Markers are asked to use their clinical discretion when marking any test question answers that are not covered by the detailed marking criteria. The introduction to the marking criteria reads:

Please use your clinical discretion to mark the few answers that may not be covered by the marking criteria below. Mark any justified responses as correct.

For example:

Section 4, question 7: ‘What could you do if you burnt a cake you had baked for your mum’s birthday?’

Child: ‘Give it to her because my mum likes burnt cake’

Also – accept local dialectal vocabulary. For example, ‘narky’ for ‘moody’, ‘get a wiggle on’ for ‘get your skates on.’

2.4.3.1 Examples of the development of the marking criteria Single word answers