engleski

Is it weak because of language – communication of children on the autism spectrum

Although pragmatics is considered a language domain, it is more socially motivated compared to structural language domains. Some studies show a positive correlation between language and pragmatic skills in children on the autism spectrum (AS), while other studies find that children on the AS have difficulty with pragmatic skills even when other language domains are maintained. The latter studies show that children on the AS perform worse on pragmatic measures when their language proficiency matches that of the control group. In addition to the above-mentioned inconsistencies in the research, a unified conclusion about the relationship between language and pragmatics is difficult to determine because of differences in methodology and the wide age range used in the various studies. The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between language and pragmatic skills in preschool children on AS and to find out pragmatic difficulties common to most of the children in the sample. The sample consists of preschool children on the AS (N=20) and average IQ. Linguistic abilities are expressed in raw scores obtained on the Comprehension Scale of the New Reynell Developmental Language Scale (Croatian edition, NRDLS-HR ; Kuvač Kraljević, Kologranić Belić, Hržica, and Kovačević, 2019). Pragmatic skills are assessed with the Children's Communication Checklist (Bishop, 1998 ; translated into Croatian), which is completed by mothers. The results confirmed our hypothesis that there is be no correlation between language comprehension and production and pragmatic development measures. Of the 32 items describing difficulties in language use, parents indicated 20 for more than 50% of the children ; more than 80% of parents marked the presence of behaviours described in 6 items (often turns the conversation to a favourite topic instead of following what the other person wants to talk about ; constantly tells things that the others already know, etc.). The present results support the hypothesis that the domains of grammar and pragmatics are discontinuous and that they develop along different developmental paths. They also underscore the importance of intervention programs that target both social skills and language development.

pragmatic skills, language skills, children on the autism spectrum

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