Abstract
Background: Some individuals with autism find it challenging to use and understand language in conversation, despite having good abilities in core aspects of language such as grammar and vocabulary. This suggests that pragmatic skills (such as understanding implied meanings in conversation) are separable from core language skills. However, it has been surprisingly difficult to demonstrate this dissociation in the general population. We propose that this may be because prior studies have used tasks in which different aspects of language are confounded. Methods: The present study used novel language tasks and factor analysis to test whether pragmatic understanding of implied meaning, as part of a broader domain involving social understanding, is separable from core language skills. 120 adult participants were recruited online to complete a 7-task battery, including a test assessing comprehension of conversational implicature. Results: In confirmatory analysis of a preregistered model, we compared whether the data showed better fit to a two-factor structure (including a "social understanding" and "core language" factor) or a simpler one-factor structure (comprising a general factor). The two-factor model showed significantly better fit. Conclusions: This study supports the view that interpreting context-dependent conversational meaning is partially distinct from core language skills. This has implications for understanding the pragmatic language impairments reported in autism.
Highlights
Theoretical underpinnings Observations of people with autism and social communication difficulties suggest that it is possible to have problems with conversational language in the relative absence of impairments in aspects of “core language”, such as vocabulary knowledge and grammatical competence (e.g. Baird & Norbury, 2016; Lam & Yeung, 2012)
Pragmatics is a specific facet of language processing that can potentially be more operationalised for assessment - from the offset, we should note that the term has frequently been overextended in the field of communication disorders to essentially mean all social aspects of communication (Cummings, 2007)
As well as allowing us to test how far pragmatic skill is separable from other language abilities, the test was designed to be clinically applicable in identifying impairments characteristic of autism and social communication disorder (SPCD) (e.g. Loukusa & Moilanen, 2009), and to be sensitive to developmental and individual differences
Summary
Theoretical underpinnings Observations of people with autism and social communication difficulties suggest that it is possible to have problems with conversational language in the relative absence of impairments in aspects of “core language”, such as vocabulary knowledge and grammatical competence (e.g. Baird & Norbury, 2016; Lam & Yeung, 2012). In a pilot study (see Methods), we found that the ICT was internally consistent, and that scores did not correlate significantly with semantic knowledge (measured by tests of vocabulary and recognition of conversational phrases/idioms) This provided some evidence that implicature comprehension dissociates from basic linguistic decoding. We set out to collect some more normative data on the ICT in typical adults to replicate that finding, and to test for a dissociation between implicature comprehension and grammatical ability too This was our key question: is pragmatic processing (as measured by the ICT) separable from core language skills (grammar and vocabulary)? Methods: The present study used novel language tasks and factor analysis to test whether pragmatic understanding of implied meaning, as part of a broader domain involving social understanding, is separable from core language skills. This has implications for understanding the pragmatic language impairments reported in autism
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