Pragmatic ability in children with early onset brain damage and children with pragmatic language impairnent

................................................................................................7 Acknowledgements .................................................................................9 Abbreviations ....................................................................................... 11 Background .......................................................................................... 13 Introduction ............................................................................................. 13 Theories of pragmatic abilities and disabilities .......................................... 14 Grice ́s maxims, relevance theory and inference .................................... 15 Politeness .............................................................................................. 17 Discourse analysis, text linguistics and narrative ability ......................... 19 Conversational context and interaction ................................................. 22 The emergentist model of pragmatic ability and disability .................... 24 Assessment of pragmatic ability ................................................................. 25 Assessment of linguistically related abilities ........................................... 25 Definition and assessment of cognitively related abilities ....................... 30 Children with early onset brain damage .................................................... 33 Cerebral palsy ....................................................................................... 33 Spina bifida and hydrocephalus ............................................................ 35 Children with pragmatic language impairment ......................................... 39 Aims .................................................................................................... 45 Methods ............................................................................................... 47 Participants ............................................................................................... 47 Procedure ................................................................................................. 49 Study I.................................................................................................. 49 Study II ................................................................................................ 50 Study III ............................................................................................... 50 Study IV ............................................................................................... 51 Analyses and scoring ................................................................................. 51 Study I.................................................................................................. 51 Study II ................................................................................................ 51 Study III ............................................................................................... 52 Study IV ............................................................................................... 52 Reliability and statistical analyses .............................................................. 53 Study I.................................................................................................. 53 Study II ................................................................................................ 53 Study III ............................................................................................... 53