Sincere, deceitful, and ironic communicative acts and the role of the theory of mind in childhood

Abstract The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship among age, first- and second-order Theory of Mind and the increasing ability of children to understand and produce different kinds of communicative acts — sincere, ironic, and deceitful communicative acts — expressed through linguistic and extralinguistic expressive means. To communicate means to modify an interlocutor’s mental states (Grice, 1989), and pragmatics studies the inferential processes that are necessary to fill the gap, which often exists in human communication, between the literal meaning of a speaker’s utterance and what the speaker intends to communicate to the interlocutor. We administered brief video-clip stories showing different kinds of pragmatic phenomena — sincere, ironic, and deceitful communicative acts — and first- and second-order ToM tasks, to 120 children, ranging in age from 3 to 8 years. The results showed the existence of a trend of difficulty in children’s ability to deal with both linguistic and extralinguistic pragmatic tasks, from the simplest to the most difficult: sincere, deceitful, and ironic communicative acts. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that age plays a significant role in explaining children’s performance on each pragmatic task. Furthermore, the hierarchical regression analysis revealed that first-order ToM has a causal role in explaining children’s performance in handling sincere and deceitful speech acts, but not irony. We did not detect any specific role for second-order ToM. Finally, ToM only partially explains the observed increasing trend of difficulty in children’s pragmatic performance: the variance in pragmatic performance explained by ToM increases between sincere and deceitful communicative acts, but not between deceit and irony. The role of inferential ability in explaining the improvement in children’s performance across the pragmatic tasks investigated is discussed

Improvement of communicative-pragmatic ability in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder:the adapted version of the cognitive pragmatic treatment

Abstract Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex pathology that includes impaired social interaction abilities. Insufficient attention has been paid to programs specifically devoted to improving communicative-pragmatic skills. Moreover, the majority of studies have focused on children, while programs specifically developed for the adolescents are lacking. The present study aims to test the feasibility and acceptability of the adapted version of the Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment for adolescents (A-CPT), a 15-session group training, as well as its ability to improve the communicative-pragmatic performance of adolescents with ASD. Twenty-one verbally fluent adolescents with ASD took part in the training; they were assessed in three phases, i.e., before, after and at three-month follow-up, using the equivalent forms of the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo), a tool for testing a wide range of pragmatic phenomena, such as direct and indirect speech acts, irony, deceit and violation of Grice’s maxims, expressed through linguistic, non-verbal, i.e., gestures, or paralinguistic expressive means. Furthermore, Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks and tests investigating the main cognitive domains, for example, Executive Functions (planning, shifting, working memory) and long-term memory, were administered. The results showed an improvement in participants’ performance in all the four scales of the ABaCo, i.e., linguistic, extralinguistic, paralinguistic and context scale; this improvement was maintained at follow-up assessment three months after the end of the program. No improvement was observed in the cognitive and ToM domains investigated, with the only exception of expressive vocabulary task. Despite the lack of a control group, the high degree of feasibility of the CPT, highlight the importance of more work needed in this research line

Why pragmatics and theory of mind do not (completely) overlap

Abstract Aim of the paper is to discuss the extent to which pragmatics, i.e., the ability to use language and other expressive means to convey meaning in a specific interactional context, overlaps with Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to ascribe mental states to oneself and the others. We present empirical data available in the current literature concerning the relation between these two faculties, with specific reference to the developmental and clinical domains. Part of the literature we take into account appears to show that ToM does correlate with pragmatic ability; however, other studies appear to show that pragmatic ability alone cannot explain the empirical differences of performance across different kinds of pragmatic tasks, and therefore that another, at least partially different faculty is required to account for human communication. We argue that to conceive pragmatics as a sort of subcomponent of ToM, and thus to conflate or reduce the notion of pragmatics into the (wider) notion of ToM, is not theoretically correct and a possible cause of methodological confusion in the relevant empirical research. It thus turns out to be necessary that the two faculties be investigated with separate theories as well as different experimental tasks

Social-pragmatic contextual comprehension in Italian preschool and school-aged children:a study using the Pragma test

Abstract Efficient communication requires the interplay of linguistic, cognitive and social skills, including the ability to make contextual inferences and to understand others’ intentions and emotions. The capacity to effectively use language in specific contexts (i.e., pragmatic ability) develops with age, and an assessment of this ability is important for understanding both typical and atypical development. The Pragma test was originally developed and validated on Finnish children to assess social-pragmatic comprehension. The present study utilizes a slightly adapted version of the Pragma test, translated into Italian, and presents the results of the test given to 110 typically developing Italian children (4–8 years of age). The Italian version of the Pragma test shows content and concurrent validity, interrater reliability, and internal consistency, and it proves to be sensitive in detecting an age-dependent pattern of performance, across pre-school and school age children, in the pragmatic parameters investigated. The present study has ramifications for clinical contexts, as data for typical pragmatic development enables identification of strengths and weaknesses in the pragmatic performance in clinical populations. Finally, the results indicate that the Pragma test is relevant to both Finnish and Italian cultural contexts, thus providing the opportunity to make cross-cultural comparisons

Neural-level associations of non-verbal pragmatic comprehension in young Finnish autistic adults

Abstract This video-based study examines the pragmatic non-verbal comprehension skills and corresponding neural-level findings in young Finnish autistic adults, and controls. Items from the Assessment Battery of Communication (ABaCo) were chosen to evaluate the comprehension of non-verbal communication. Inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis of the functional magnetic resonance imaging data was used to reveal the synchrony of brain activation across participants during the viewing of pragmatically complex scenes of ABaCo videos. The results showed a significant difference between the ISC maps of the autistic and control groups in tasks involving the comprehension of non-verbal communication, thereby revealing several brain regions where correlation of brain activity was greater within the control group. The results suggest a possible weaker modulation of brain states in response to the pragmatic non-verbal communicative situations in autistic participants. Although there was no difference between the groups in behavioural responses to ABaCo items, there was more variability in the accuracy of the responses in the autistic group. Furthermore, mean answering and reaction times correlated with the severity of autistic traits. The results indicate that even if young autistic adults may have learned to use compensatory resources in their communicative-pragmatic comprehension, pragmatic processing in naturalistic situations still requires additional effort

Non-linguistic comprehension, social inference and empathizing skills in autistic young adults, young adults with autistic traits and control young adults:group differences and interrelatedness of skills

Abstract Background: Despite increasing knowledge of social communication skills of autistic peole, the interrelatedness of different skills such as non-linguistic comprehension, social inference and empathizing skills is not much known about. A better understanding of the complex interplay between different domains of social communication helps us to develop assessment protocols for individuals with social communication difficulties. Aims: To compare the performances of autistic young adults, young adults with autistic traits identified in childhood and control young adults in social communication tasks measuring non-linguistic comprehension, social inference and empathizing skills. In addition, to examine associations between the different social communication measures. Methods & Procedures: Autistic young adults (n = 34), young adults with autistic traits (n = 19) and control young adults (n = 36) completed the extra- and paralinguistic scales of the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo), the Faux Pas Recognition Test, Social–Pragmatic Questions (SoPra) and the Empathy Quotient (EQ). Outcomes & Results: Group differences were found in the performance in the ABaCo, SoPra and EQ scores. Compared with the control young adults, autistic young adults scored lower. The performance of the young adults in the autistic traits group fell in between the other two groups. There were no group differences in the Faux Pas Recognition Test. The variability within the groups was large in all measurements. In the control group, there was a significant correlation between EQ and SoPra scores and between the Faux Pas and SoPra scores. In the autistic group, a significant correlation was found between Faux Pas and SoPra scores. Also, other patterns were observed but these were not statistically significant. Conclusions & Implications: The young adults with autistic traits fell in between the control and autistic young adults, highlighting the presence of the continuum in the terms of features of social communication. The results support other current research that suggests that theory of mind and other social communication skills may not be universally or widely impaired in all autistic individuals without cognitive deficits. Although all tasks examined social communication skills, only a small number of significant correlations were found between test scores. This highlights that clinical conclusions about a person’s social communication should be based on the outcomes of different types of methods measuring different aspects of social communication. It is clear that the interrelatedness of different social communication skills needs further research. What This Paper Adds What is already known on this subject: For successful communication, the ability to infer others’ emotions, intentions and mental states is crucial. Autistic people have difficulty with many aspects of social communication. However, the associations between different aspects of social communication need to be better understood. What this paper adds to existing knowledge: The unique contribution of this study is to compare the performance of autistic people not only with that of a control group but also with people with childhood autistic traits. This provides an understanding of the interrelatedness of different social communication skills in people with varying degrees of autistic traits. This study used four assessment methods focusing on three different social communication elements (non-linguistic comprehension, social inference and empathizing skills). These elements have complex relationships to one another, some being closely overlapping, some more distally related and some reflect more complex multifactorial elements. This study shows that although groups differ from each other in most of the assessments, the performance of different groups overlapped showing that many autistic young adults can perform well in non-linguistic and social inference tasks in structured assessment contexts. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Our findings suggest that in the assessment of social communication, self-reports and clinical assessments can be used effectively together. They can complement each other, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of a person, leading to more personalized therapeutic interventions