Why pragmatic impairment? A case study in the comprehension of inferential meaning

This paper discusses a case study of Sarah (aged 9;8-10;3) who is reported to have pragmatic difficulties. The focus is on her comprehension of questions, which are asked on the basis of pictures and heard stories. Particular focus is on the pragmatic (or inferential) demands of the input questions and their relationship to the (in)appropriacy of the answer. Data from 16 normally functioning 6- and 8-year-old children are also presented for comparative purposes. The study shows that Sarah has difficulty with questions which require her to go beyond visually presented or verbally stated information. On one set of tasks she was to answer questions on the basis of composite pictures: for some of the questions, the answer was obvious from the picture (descriptive questions) and for others information needed to be inferred beyond the picture (for example, by imagining what had happened before and what is likely to happen next). Sarah\u27s performance was poorer on the inferential questions than the descriptive questions and poorer than the performance of 6- and 8-year-old normally functioning control children. Although the control children also found the inferential questions more difficult than the descriptive questions, this difficulty was not as pronounced as Sarah\u27s. This trend was also apparent in a set of tasks which required the children to answer questions on the basis of verbally told stories. This study suggests that pragmatically impaired children may have difficulty going beyond explicitly presented information and this would manifest as pragmatic production and comprehension problems. In cognitive terms, this may indicate difficulty with the process of inferencing

Referential communication tasks: Performance by normal and pragmatically impaired children

Two groups of children, a pragmatically impaired (PI) group and a group of language-normal (LN) age-matched peers, were compared by use of a referential communication task. Experimenter and child both played the roles of listener and instructor during the task and, in addition, the experimenter sometimes failed to give adequate information when in the role of instructor. Lexical content and structural complexity were controlled, and it was hypothesised that difficulties for the PI group would arise when in the role of instructor, as a result of failing to specify necessary information in order for the experimenter to respond appropriately. In fact, the main difference between the two groups arose when the experimenter failed to give adequate information to the child; the LN children were quick to realise this and to request clarification, whereas the PI children requested clarification to a lesser extent and appeared less aware of the need to do so. Possible explanations for this pattern of results are explored

Development of comprehension of ironic utterances in 3-to 9-year-old Finnish-speaking children

This study explores the comprehension of simple ironic utterances in 210 Finnish children aged from 3 to 9 years. If the child answered the question correctly, he/she was asked to explain correct answers. The results indicated that there was large individual variation within age groups both in answers and explanations. In terms of correct answers there was a significant difference between 6- and 7-year-olds and in correct explanations between age groups of 3-4, 6-7 and 7-8. Analysis of incorrect answers showed that literal interpretation of an utterance was the most common incorrect answer type in all age groups. Totally irrelevant answers occurred only in children aged 3 and 4. In terms of incorrect explanations, turntaking and incorrect focus categories were the most common incorrect explanation types. Contrary to previous studies, in this study already some of the 3- and 4-year-olds showed an emerging ability to comprehend irony

Assessing the functional adequacy of children\u27s phonological systems

This paper develops the means of assessing the effect of children\u27s contrastively restricted phonological systems on a lexical system, that is assessing the functional adequacy of a phonological system. The concept and measure of Functional Loss (FLOSS) is proposed as a measure of the number of lexical distinctions left unsignalled in a lexical system due to the loss of contrasts in the phonological system. FLOSS provides a means of prioritizing treatment goals for therapy which aim at the elimination of homophony from children\u27s lexical systems, and consequently from their speech. It is shown that the phonological process framework provides a suitable means for the assessment of functional adequacy by enabling one to make predictions about the potential of process combinations for FLOSS. FLOSS values calculated on the basis of the \u27common\u27 vocabulary of children (5; 11-6; 11) are also provided

Functional considerations in phonological assessment of child speech

No abstract availabl

Pragmatic impairment: a case study

The question of why a child may be diagnosed as having pragmatic difficulties or pragmatic impairment is one which is currently being asked by researchers and other speech and language professionals. The identifiying criteria for such a diagnosis remain unclear. This paper reports on a detailed case study of a child, Sarah (aged 9;8-10;3), who was reported to have pragmatic impairment as her primary difficulty by her speech and language therapist. The child attends a language unit within a mainstream school in the UK. A number of language (including narrative) and non-verbal tasks have been carried out with the child over a seven-month period, and spontaneous conversational data has also been obtained. The data is explored from grammatical, lexical and pragmatic perspectives. This child\u27s performance is also compared with that of two groups of normal children, 6-year-olds and 8-year-olds. It is argued that Sarah has demonstrable pragmatic impairments, especially with inferencing skills, and that these impairments represent more than a developmental delay. It is also argued that these impairments cannot be explained by other linguistic difficulties that she may have. Sarah\u27s difficulties are discussed in terms of problems building up a \u27mental model\u27 (Johnson-Laird, 1983) of situations in order to be able to make effective inferences. It is hope to carry out a further study with children who have a range of specific language impairments to see to what extent such problems are restricted to the pragmatic domain, or influenced by deficits at other levels

Normal and language-impaired children\u27s use of reference: Syntactic versus pragmatic processing

The present study investigates children\u27s syntactic and pragmatic processing when specifying referents presented in short video clips. Within Relevance theory, the assumption of \u27optimal relevance\u27 implies that utterances are intended to involve the least processing effort on the part of the listener. In the present context, lexically specified NPs are assumed to be more in line with optimal relevance than pronouns. Subjects were 48 normally developing children aged 3;4-8;10 and 30 SLI children aged 5;1-8;9, divided into a low and a normal MLU group. Children\u27s responses were coded according to levels of pragmatic processing and syntactic positions. Normally developing children\u27s referent specifications were found to be increasingly relevant with increasing age. Differences between SLI and normal children were only found for the low MLU group with SLI who used fewer pronouns than the younger children, thereby showing that syntactic limitations alone cannot account for children\u27s specification of referents

Relevance theory and communication disorders

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Introducing Relevance Theory Developmental Disorders Acquired Disorders Conclusions Reference

Clinical Pragmatics: Unravelling the Complexities of Communicative Failure

In linguistic terms pragmatics covers the whole area of language use and communication in action. It includes the way in which language, gestures and other signals used in everyday situations are applied to patients suffering with impaired communication. This book explores the changes which have taken place over the past 20 years in the study of language and communication. Discourse analysis and pragmatics provide a way of exploring communication success and failure and are important concepts for health care professionals working with communication disability. The text relates discourse analysis and pragmatics to the study of speech pathology and the practice of speech therapy. A practical book, it offers guidance to thos working with the language handicapped and includes ideas tested in clinical settings. Case studies and examples are used throughout. This book should be a valuable source of information for undergraduate and graduate students of speech pathology, clinicians and researchers, special needs teachers and psychologists and anyone with an interest in communicative ability/disability