ASSESSING PRAGMATIC ABILITIES WITH THE BRIEF VERSION OF THE APACS TEST AND THE RELATIONSHIP WITH VOCABULARY AND CREATIVITY ASPECTS

Pragmatics refers to the contextual use of language, which is often compromised in neurological and psychiatric populations and requires a quick evaluation via a manageable tool. Pragmatics is also at the pinnacle of human cognitive skills, with strict relationship with other cognitive domains including creativity. The present work is composed of two studies. In Study 1, the aim was to investigate the validity and reliability of a short version of the APACS test, the APACS Brief. Eighty-one participants (mean age= 41.86; SD= 15.04) were remotely presented with one of the two parallel versions (A and B) of the APACS Brief test (inter-session interval= ± 14 days) and with tests measuring other cognitive functions intertwined with pragmatics. Results supported the construct validity of the APACS Brief, which significantly correlates with the APACS test (r(12) = .55, p = .044), and its good test-retest reliability (r(22)= .59, p = .003), as well as the equivalence of the A and B versions of the test. Concerning the relationship with the other cognitive domains, APACS Brief significantly correlated with vocabulary (r(79) = .39, p < .001) and with cognitive status (r(79) = .22, p = .045). The aim of Study 2 was to investigate the relationship between pragmatics and creativity. Fifty-five participants from Study 1 (mean age=42.20; SD=16.9) were presented with a metaphor generation task (Kasirer & Mashal, 2014) to measure creative thinking. No significant relationship was observed between creativity and pragmatics. Still, the two correlated with vocabulary skills, suggesting the presence of more complex relationships between them. Overall, this thesis presents a flexible and manageable tool to evaluate pragmatic abilities and points to the importance of considering the pragmatic dimension of language in its complex interplay with other domains as vocabulary, cognitive status and creativity.