Pragmatic abilities in children with ASD, ADHD, Down syndrome and typical development through the Galician version of the CCC-2

Abstract

BackgroundPragmatics is an area of language that may be impaired in a wide variety of disorders. However, there is a dearth of instruments for the assessment of pragmatic abilities. The Children's Communication Checklist (CCC-2) is the most widespread test, although more adaptations of this instrument to other languages are necessary. AimsIn this paper we (1) develop a pilot study to adapt the CCC-2 to the Galician language, (2) check the capacity of this version to assess communicative difficulties in Galician speakers from 4 to 16 years of age, and (3) we also check its capacity to discriminate the linguistic profiles of different disorders. MethodThe reference profile of the Galician CCC-2 was established with a sample of 48 schoolchildren. Comparisons of the scores obtained by children with ASD (n=11), ADHD (n=10), Down Syndrome (DS) (n=9) and Typical Development (n=10) were carried out. ResultsThe Galician CCC-2 (1) accurately identified children with and without communicative impairments, (2) distinguished between profiles with predominance of pragmatic (ASD and ADHD) and structural disorders (DS), and (3) distinguished between different profiles with predominance of pragmatic impairment. ConclusionsThe Galician CCC-2 seems to be a useful instrument to assess pragmatic disorders and to differentiate among different clinical groups.