Pragmatic Deficits Research Articles

Ignorance and Inference: Do Problems with Gricean Epistemic Reasoning Explain Children’s Difficulty with Scalar Implicature?

Journal of Semantics Advance Access published December 4, 2014 Journal of Semantics, 0, 2014: 1–29 doi:10.1093/jos/ffu015 LARA HOCHSTEIN University of California, San Diego ALAN BALE Concordia University DANNY FOX The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Massachusetts Institute of Technology DAVID BARNER University of California, San Diego Abstract Unlike adults, children as old as 9 years of age often fail to infer that a sentence like, ‘Some of the children slept’ implies the falsity of its stronger alternative, ‘All of the children slept’—an inference referred to as a ‘scalar implicature’. Several explanations have been proposed to account for children’s failures with scalar implicature, including domain-general processing limitations, pragmatic deficits or an inability to access the relevant alternatives in a lexical scale (e.g. all as an alternative to some). Our study focused on the role of Gricean epistemic reasoning in children’s failures by testing their ability to compute ‘ignorance implicatures’, which require reasoning about speaker knowledge and informativeness but which differ from scalar implicature with respect to the alternative statements that are involved. We administered two matched tasks to 4- and 5-year-old children: one that assessed their ability to compute ignorance implicatures, and another that assessed their ability to compute scalar implicatures. Five-year-olds successfully computed ignorance implicatures despite failing to compute scalar implicatures, while 4-year-olds failed at both types of inference. These results suggest that 5-year-olds are able to reason about speaker knowledge and informative- ness, and thus that it is difficult to explain their deficit with scalar implicature via these factors. We speculate about other possible sources of their difficulties, including pro- cessing limits and children’s access to the specific scalar alternatives required by scalar implicature. s The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from http://jos.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, San Diego on December 5, 2014 Ignorance and Inference: Do Problems with Gricean Epistemic Reasoning Explain Children’s Difficulty with Scalar Implicature?

Pragmatic Language Deficits in Asperger’s Syndrome (Higher Functioning Autism): Review of Pathology and Effective Treatments in Adults

Autism is a neuro developmental disorder. Social communication deficiency is one of the core features of the syndrome. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder vary in their ability considerably. Despite being of normal or above normal intelligence those with higher functioning autism may present with varying degree of deficits in social communication. Few studies have considered structural abnormalities with respect to brain functioning. This article examines evidence in literature for pragmatic language deficits, origins, assessments and treatments among adolescents and adults with higher functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Ad-hoc Implicature in Preschool Children

If a speaker tells us that “some guests were late to the party,” we typically infer that not all were. Implicatures, in which an ambiguous statement (“some and possibly all”) is strengthened pragmatically (to “some and not all”), are a paradigm case of pragmatic reasoning. Inferences of this sort are difficult for young children, but recent work suggests that this mismatch may stem from issues in understanding the relationship between lexical items such as “some” and “all” rather than broader pragmatic deficits. We tested children’s ability to make nonquantificational pragmatic inferences by constructing contextually derived “ad-hoc” implicatures, using sets of pictures with contrasting features. We found that 4-year-olds and some 3-year-olds were able to make implicatures successfully using these displays. Hence, apparent failures in scalar implicature are likely due to difficulties specific to the constructions and tasks used in previous work; these difficulties may have masked aspects of children’s underlying pragmatic competence.

Adolescents With High-Functioning Autism: An Investigation of Comorbid Anxiety and Depression

Adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA) possess core social and pragmatic deficits, which interfere with normal relationship development. At a time when friendships are increasingly important, many adolescents with HFA realize they are different from their peers. Initial research has indicated that adolescence is the time when symptoms of anxiety and depression are most likely to develop. The purpose of this study was to increase knowledge about anxiety and depression in HFA through focusing on the adolescent development period and obtaining assessment information from multiple sources. Results indicate that adolescents reported elevated levels of social anxiety, separation panic, and anhedonia compared with normative samples. Parents and teachers reported that adolescents experienced significant overall anxiety and depressive symptomatology compared with the normative samples. Manifestations of HFA were associated with higher levels of anxiety as reported by parents. Results bring into question the validity of self-report scales for adolescents with HFA in the ability to accurately self-report and in the measures’ capacity to differentiate between internalizing symptoms and core HFA behaviors.

Evidence of Pragmatic Impairments in Speech and Proverb Interpretation in Schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia has been suggested to involve linguistic pragmatic deficits. In this study, two aspects of pragmatic ability were assessed; comprehension and production. Drawing on relevance theory and Gricean implicatures to assess shared attention and interpretation in a linguistic context, discourse samples and proverb interpretation were transcribed from recorded interviews with patients with schizophrenia and control subjects. The productive aspect of implicatures was assessed by quantifying the use of 'connectors' in discourse. Receptive aspects were assessed by scoring interpretations of four common proverbs. Statistically significant effects were found: patients with schizophrenia used connectors less than controls as well as performing worse in proverb comprehension. Positive correlations between connectors and proverb interpretation in all subjects suggested an underlying pragmatic root for both productive and receptive aspects. The relative number of connectors (as a percentage of words used) provided a better index of pragmatic ability than total number because total output appeared to be influenced by additional factors such as IQ. Deficits were found in the use of connectors and in proverb interpretation even when controlling for verbal IQ, suggesting that pragmatic aspects of language are particularly vulnerable in schizophrenia compared with other verbal abilities.

The Acquisition of the Dative Alternation in Norwegian

The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles governing how information is organized in adult grammar (Clark & Clark 1977; Gundel 1988). The question of whether child grammars organize information in the same way is as yet unresolved. We address this question by considering the Dative Alternation in Norwegian. In an experimental study, we investigate to what extent Norwegian children's and adults’ sentence production is governed by givenness when the speaker chooses one word order over another. Our results suggest that givenness influences the word-order choices of both children and adults. However, children more often than adults tend to omit given recipients and have a tendency to produce prepositional datives even when the recipient represents given information. The results are discussed in light of previous acquisition findings and syntactic accounts of the phenomenon. We argue that children's behavior is not a result of a pragmatic deficit or an immature syntactic component per se but rather a failure to consistently integrate the two.

EPA-0660 – Pragmatic skills in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most frequent reported psychiatric disease for children with language disorder. ADHD can create problems in accessing language and using language appropriately, the difficulties in language are secondary to the attentional difficulties. Objective To study the pragmatic language deficit in ADHD children. Methods This study included 62 consecutive newly diagnosed ADHD children according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders IV-TR criteria, their age ranged from 6–8 year. Then they were referred to the Phoniatric unit, Kasr Al-Aini for pragmatic assessment. Forty four normal control children (age and sex matched), were included in the study. The included samples were subjected to the protocol of language and pragmatic assessment applied in Kasr Al-Aini. Twenty-four children with ADHD were excluded as they had history of delayed language development. Four control children were also excluded because of phonetic errors. The 38 ADHD children and 40 controls were subjected to the following psychiatric assessment: Semi-structured interview to confirm that the patients have ADHD, Wechsler Intelligence scale for children (WISC), and Conner's’ Parent Rating Scale-Revised: long version (CPRS-R: L). Results ADHD children got less significant scores in intention, narrative, conversation and total pragmatic scores than controls. There was significant negative correlation between inattention Conners’ subscale with intention and narrative pragmatic subscales. Also, significant negative correlation between social problems Conners’ subscale and intention and conversation. Conclusion ADHD children have pragmatic deficits than controls

Spontaneous peer conversation in preschoolers with high‐functioning autism spectrum disorder versus typical development

In typical development, early peer talk is crucial for pragmatic development. The pragmatic deficit, reflected in remarkably deficient conversational capabilities, is considered the hallmark of the language deficit in autism spectrum disorder (ASD); yet, spontaneous peer talk in preschoolers with ASD was rarely explored. We conducted comparative assessment of spontaneous peer talk during 10-min free-play scenarios in preschoolers with high-functioning ASD (HFASD; n=27) versus those with typical development (n=30). Groups were matched on SES, verbal/nonverbal MA, IQ, and CA. Correlations with CA, IQ, VMA, and NVMA were examined. We compared the two groups' interactions with a friend-partner versus a nonfriend partner; in addition, in the HFASD group, we examined interactions with a typical partner (mixed dyads) versus a partner with HFASD (nonmixed dyads). Children's conversations were videotaped and coded to tap pragmatic capabilities and conversational quality. Findings revealed group differences in pragmatic abilities and conversational quality, with the typical group showing more intact capacities than the HFASD group. However, in the HFASD group, interactions with friends surpassed interactions with nonfriends on several key pragmatic capabilities and on all conversational quality measures (meshing, assertiveness, and responsiveness), thus suggesting that friendship may enable children to converse in a more socially complex and coregulated way. Also, children with higher cognitive capabilities, especially in the HFASD group, demonstrated more intact pragmatic capacities. Despite the robust pragmatic deficit in HFASD, reflected in conversational capabilities, involvement in friendship relationships and high cognitive capabilities were linked to more intact pragmatic capacities. Theoretical and therapeutic implications are discussed.

Pragmatic deficits and social impairment in children with ADHD

Impaired social functioning has been well documented in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Existing treatments for ADHD are effective for managing core symptoms, but have limited effectiveness at improving social skills, suggesting that social deficits in ADHD may not be directly related to core symptoms of the disorder. Language problems are also common in ADHD, with accumulating evidence of pragmatic language difficulties. Pragmatic deficits are associated with social impairment in several neurodevelopmental disorders. This study systematically examined pragmatic language functioning in children with ADHD and whether social impairment in ADHD is mediated by pragmatic deficits. Sixty-three children (28 ADHD; 35 typically developing), ages 7-11years, underwent a comprehensive assessment of pragmatic language, including parent ratings, standardized tests, and a narrative task. Parents also rated children's social skills on the Social Skills Improvement System. Children with ADHD had poorer pragmatic language skills relative to peers across all measures, even after controlling for general language abilities. Furthermore, pragmatic abilities as measured by parent ratings, mediated the relation between ADHD and social skills. Pragmatic language skills are impaired in many children with ADHD and may partially account for high rates of social impairment. Implications for treatment and possible prevention of social problems in children with ADHD are discussed.

Comparison of Grammar in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: The Case of Binding in Williams Syndrome and Autism With and Without Language Impairment

This study investigates whether distinct neurodevelopmental disorders show distinct patterns of impairments in particular grammatical abilities and the relation of those grammatical patterns to general language delays and intellectual disabilities. We studied two disorders (autism and Williams syndrome [WS]) and two distinct properties (Principle A that governs reflexives and Principle B that, together with its associated pragmatic rule, governs pronouns) of the binding module of grammar. These properties are known to have markedly different courses of acquisition in typical development. We compare the knowledge of binding in children with autism with language impairment (ALI) and those with normal language (ALN) to that of children with WS, matched on age to the ALN group, and on age and nonverbal mental age (MA) to the ALI group, as well as to two groups of typically developing (TD) controls, matched on nonverbal MA to ALI and ALN groups. Our results reveal a remarkably different pattern of comprehension of personal pronouns and reflexives in ALI as opposed to ALN, WS, and two groups of TD controls. All five groups demonstrated an equal delay in their comprehension of personal pronouns, in line with widely reported delays in TD literature, argued to be due to delayed pragmatic abilities. However, and most strikingly, the ALI group also showed a pronounced difficulty in comprehension of reflexive pronouns, and particularly of the knowledge that the antecedent of a reflexive must c-command it. The revealed pattern confirms the existence of a particular impairment concerning Principle A in this module of grammar, unrelated to general language delays or cognitive deficits generally present in a large portion of individuals with autism as well as WS, or to general pragmatic deficits, known to be particularly prevalent in the population with autism.

2760 – Grammatical deficits in persian and english-speaking autistic children: similarities and differences

A common feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is language impairment. But the existing similarities and differences of language impairment among autistic children worldwide have not been thoroughly analyzed. Recognizing such similarities and differences can lead to possible interventions designed for autistic children to target their specific language deficits and help them to communicate more efficiently. This study is an attempt to explore similarities as well as differences between Persian and English languages. It starts with a review of research, which was conducted mainly among English-speaking children and proceeds with a qualitative research (including semi-structured interviews and focus groups with specialists as well as children's mothers) conducted in a center for treatment of autistic disorders in Iran. The result reveals that Persian-speaking autistic children like English-speaking ones suffer from grammatical, pragmatic and verbal-sematic deficits, but certain differences can be noticed due to the linguistic differences between languages. The existing differences are specifically in the realm of grammatical deficit which itself is comprised of tense problems, subject/verb agreement problems (since Persian is a pro-drop language) and misuse of diectic terms. These three areas are further elaborated via relevant examples.

Is there an Association between Pragmatic Language, Social Cognition and Executive Deficits in Parkinson's Disease?

Is there an Association between Pragmatic Language, Social Cognition and Executive Deficits in Parkinson's Disease?

The pragmatic language abilities of children with ADHD following a play-based intervention involving peer-to-peer interactions

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) commonly experience significant pragmatic language deficits which put them at risk of developing emotional and social difficulties. This study aimed to examine the pragmatic language exhibited in a peer-to-peer interaction between the children with ADHD and their playmates following a pilot play-based intervention. Participants were children (aged 5–11 years) diagnosed as having ADHD (n = 14) and their self-selected typically-developing playmate. Pragmatic language was measured using the Pragmatic Protocol (PP) and the Structured Multidimensional Assessment Profiles (S-MAPs). Children's structural language was also screened and compared against their pragmatic language skills pre–post play-based intervention. The pragmatic language of children with ADHD improved significantly from pre–post intervention as measured by both the PP and S-MAPs. Both children with and without structural language difficulties improved significantly from pre- to post-intervention using S-MAPs; only children with structural language difficulties improved significantly using PP. The findings support the notion that pragmatic skills may improve following a play-based intervention that is characterized by didactic social interaction. As pragmatic language is a complex construct, it is proposed that clinicians and researchers reconsider the working definition of pragmatic language and the operationalization thereof in assessments.

Factor structure of the Serbian version of the Children's Communication Checklist-2

Keeping in mind that traditional tests were largely insensitive to pragmatic impairment, Bishop (2003) created a second version of the Children's Communication Checklist (CCC-2) in order to identify pragmatic deficits in children with communication problems. Unfortunately, it was revealed that certain subscales of the Serbian version of the CCC-2 have unacceptably low internal consistency. Because dividing the test into original subscales did not apply for the Serbian population, the aim of this paper was to determine the factor structure of the CCC-2. The sample consisted of 1344 typically developing, monolingual participants of both sexes, aged from 4 to 17 (M = 9.52; SD = 2.72). Participants were recruited from three statistical regions in Serbia. All participants attended regular kindergarten, elementary or secondary schools. CCC-2 factor analysis was determined by using the principal component method, with Varimax rotation of principal axes. A factor analysis showed that the CCC-2 had three factors (General Communication Ability, Pragmatics and Structural Language Aspects), which accounted for 29.39% of the total variance. A three-factor solution should be further confirmed in the course of a clinical validation of the CCC-2.

Comprehension of reflexive and personal pronouns in children with autism: A syntactic or pragmatic deficit?

ABSTRACTAlthough pragmatic deficits are well documented in autism, little is known about the extent to which grammatical knowledge in this disorder is deficient, or merely delayed when compared to that of typically developing children functioning at similar linguistic or cognitive levels. This study examines the knowledge of constraints on the interpretation of personal and reflexive pronouns, an aspect of grammar not previously investigated in autism, and known to be subject to differential developmental schedules in unimpaired development. Fourteen children with autism (chronological age = 6–17 years,M= 11) showed some difficulties comprehending personal pronouns, no different from those observed in two groups of younger controls matched on nonverbal IQ or receptive grammar, but in line with the reported pragmatic deficits and general language delay in this population. However, their interpretation of reflexives was significantly worse than that of the control children. This pattern is not evidenced at any stage of typical development, revealing an impaired grammatical knowledge in our sample of children with autism, and is argued not to be due to a general language delay or cognitive deficits.

Pragmatics, Cognitive Flexibility and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Pragmatic deficits of persons with autism spectrum disorders [ASDs] are often traced back to a dysfunction in Theory of Mind. However, the exact nature of the link between pragmatics and mindreading in autism is unclear. Pragmatic deficits in ASDs are not homogenous: in particular, while inter‐subjective dimensions are affected, some other pragmatic capacities seem to be relatively preserved. Moreover, failure on classical false‐belief tasks stems from executive problems that go beyond belief attribution; false‐belief tasks require taking an alternative perspective on the reality. While this capacity is functional in typically developing young children, it is impaired in ASDs. Typically developing children are capable of taking their interlocutor's perspective into account when communicating, whereas poor cognitive flexibility makes it difficult for persons with ASDs to grasp the inter‐subjective character of communicative stimuli. This analysis predicts that those pragmatic processes that amount to merely taking into account salient contextual facts during utterance interpretation, without necessarily adopting the interlocutor's perspective, may be preserved in ASDs.

Pragmatic assessment of schizophrenic bilinguals’ L1 and L2 use1

This paper reports on a study investigating the pragmatic skills and deficits of schizophrenic bilinguals in their spontaneous first language (L1) and second language (L2) speech. Smit (2009) (see also Smit et al., this volume) argues that the locus of deficits in schizophrenic speech is semantics and suggests that a next step would be to investigate the pragmatic skills of schizophrenic bilinguals, given the close relationship between semantics and pragmatics. The study reported here followed up on Smit's suggestion and employed Prutting and Kirchner's (1987) Pragmatic Protocol to pragmatically assess the spontaneous L1 Afrikaans and L2 English use of four schizophrenic bilinguals who exhibited differential symptomatology, that is presented with different symptoms, as well as a difference in the severity thereof, when assessed in their L1 than when assessed in their L2. On the basis of the results of the assessment we conclude that such pragmatic assessment (i) provides insight into the nature of schizophrenic speech but (ii) does not provide insight into the phenomenon of differential symptomatology.

Pragmatic and executive functions in traumatic brain injury and right brain damage: An exploratory comparative study.

ObjectiveTo describe the frequency of pragmatic and executive deficits in right brain damaged (RBD) and in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients, and to verify possible dissociations between pragmatic and executive functions in these two groups.MethodsThe sample comprised 7 cases of TBI and 7 cases of RBD. All participants were assessed by means of tasks from the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery and executive functions tests including the Trail Making Test, Hayling Test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tasks, and working memory tasks from the Brazilian Brief Neuropsychological Assessment Battery NEUPSILIN. Z-score was calculated and a descriptive analysis of frequency of deficits (Z< -1.5) was carried out.ResultsRBD patients presented with deficits predominantly on conversational and narrative discursive tasks, while TBI patients showed a wider spread pattern of pragmatic deficits. Regarding EF, RBD deficits included predominantly working memory and verbal initiation impairment. On the other hand, TBI individuals again exhibited a general profile of executive dysfunction, affecting mainly working memory, initiation, inhibition, planning and switching. Pragmatic and executive deficits were generally associated upon comparisons of RBD patients and TBI cases, except for two simple dissociations: two post-TBI cases showed executive deficits in the absence of pragmatic deficits.DiscussionPragmatic and executive deficits can be very frequent following TBI or vascular RBD. There seems to be an association between these abilities, indicating that although they can co-occur, a cause-consequence relationship cannot be the only hypothesis.

Individual differences in pronoun reversal: Evidence from two longitudinal case studies

Pronoun reversal, the use of you for self-reference and I for an addressee, has often been associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and impaired language. However, recent case studies have shown the phenomenon also to occur in typically developing and even precocious talkers. This study examines longitudinal corpus data from two children, a typically developing girl, and a boy with Asperger's syndrome. Both were precocious talkers who reversed the majority of their personal pronouns for several months. A comparison of the children's behaviors revealed quantitative and qualitative differences in pronoun use: the girl showed 'semantic confusion', using second person pronouns for self-reference, whereas the boy showed a discourse-pragmatic deficit related to perspective-taking. The results suggest that there are multiple mechanisms underlying pronoun reversal and provide qualified support for both the Name/Person Hypothesis (Clark, 1978; Charney, 1980b) and the Plurifunctional Pronoun Hypothesis (Chiat, 1982).

Narrative competence and underlying mechanisms in children with pragmatic language impairment

ABSTRACTThis study investigated narrative competence in children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) and the extent to which it is related to impairments in theory of mind and executive functioning (EF). Narrative competence was assessed using a retelling design in a group of 77 children with PLI and a control group of 77 typically developing children, aged 5. The children with PLI showed an overall poorer narrative competence as apparent in measures of narrative productivity, organization of content, and cohesion. Some of these differences could be attributed to language impairments. The remaining differences could be partly interpreted as pragmatic deficits. In typically developing children, narrative productivity skills were related to both theory of mind and EF, but only theory of mind explained unique variance once language ability was added to the model. In the PLI group, however, narrative productivity skills were solely related to EF, over and above language abilities. Organization of story content and cohesion were not related to any of the cognitive measures for either group. The results indicate that children with PLI show narrative deficits and that these deficits are related to EF.