I review research on the pragmatic, or social, aspects of language development in children, adolescents, and young adults with Down syndrome. Virtually all facets of pragmatic development have been found to be delayed in Down syndrome, but some facets are especially delayed relative to cognitive development. Areas of strength in pragmatics (e.g., narration), however, have also been identified. ...

inadequacy of descriptive theories to account for the mechanism of reference led to the emergence of the direct reference theory. this theory, however, has its own problems. if the only component of the meaning of a proper name is its referent, then how is it that the substitution of two co-referent proper names in propositional attitude sentences changes the truth value of the sentence? the pr...

the present study investigated learners’ interlanguage pragmatic development through analysis of 99 requestive emails addressed to a faculty member over a period of up to two years. most previous studies mainly investigated how non-native english speaking students’ (nness) pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence differed from native english speaking students (ness) and compared learners ...

This article provides an overview of the history Constructivism and its essential theory practice in Soviet Russia 1920s early 1930s, focusing particularly on various areas design activity, including architecture furniture, graphic photography, sculpture textiles. Consequently, it analyses detail several designs that embody most clearly Constructivist approach. Some these were produced by origi...

UNLABELLED The aim of the present study was to evaluate the pragmatic abilities of patients with schizophrenia in a variety of pragmatic phenomena expressed through different communicative means (language, gestures, and paralinguistic modality). For this purpose we used the Assessment Battery of Communication (ABaCo; Sacco et al., 2008). The ABaCo is a validated clinical tool for assessing prag...

BACKGROUND Pragmatic communication abilities may depend on intact frontal lobe systems. Independent evidence suggests that some persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) are impaired on measures of frontal lobe function. HYPOTHESIS We therefore hypothesized in Study 1 that pragmatic communication skills would be impaired in some persons with PD and would be linked to frontal dysfunction in these ...

INTRODUCTION Pragmatic randomized controlled trials (RCTs) mimic usual clinical practice and they are critical to inform decision-making by patients, clinicians and policy-makers in real-world settings. Pragmatic RCTs assess effectiveness of available medicines, while explanatory RCTs assess efficacy of investigational medicines. Explanatory and pragmatic are the extremes of a continuum. This d...