This study tested the hypothesis that pragmatic (i.e., social) language impairment is linked to arousal dysregulation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fragile X syndrome (FXS). Forty boys with ASD, 39 with FXS, and 27 with typical development (TD), aged 4-15 years, participated. Boys with FXS were hyperaroused compared to boys with TD but did not differ from boys with ASD. Dampened vagal t...

Several subjects with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) show communicative and pragmatic problems. In this study, we suggested that mentalistic comprehension tasks would help us to find a deteriorated pragmatic profile among the population with SLI. To achieve this goal, a group of participants with conventional SLI (n=11) was compared to a group of SLI with more pragmatic problems (n=9) and t...

Dr. Gallagher's thoughtful appraisal of the "pragmatics revolution" in the field of language intervention describes the influence of the increased focus on language use in clinical assessment and treatment of language impairment. As Gallagher notes, the last 10 years of emphasis on pragmatics has altered the way that language impairment is viewed and approached. However, as she also comments, t...

Previous studies have found that the morpho-syntactic aspects of grammatical morphemes, including articles, pose problems for Dutch-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In the present study it is demonstrated that article errors in Dutch children with SLI appear to be modulated by the pragmatic context to some extent. This study examines the pragmatic aspects of articles i...

The scope of this study is threefold. First, it examines socioeconomic status (SES) and pragmatic language development (PLD), hypothesizing that parental education employment levels are mediators, where SES affects PLD mainly through its influence on levels. Second, we used quantitative (age) qualitative (gender) variables as moderators, gender age moderate the relationship between classroom in...

Narrative ability is one of the most promising ways to assess communicative competence in children: Coordination of lexical, morphosyntactic, phonological, and pragmatic elements is needed to produce narrations. Narratives might even serve as a diagnostic tool for Specific Language Impairment, since children with Specific Language Impairment are reported to have difficulties producing (oral) na...

All children with autism spectrum disorders have deficits in pragmatic aspects of communication; however, formal language abilities are extremely heterogeneous, ranging from nonverbal to superior linguistic skills. Recent studies have focused on defining different language phenotypes among verbal children. One subtype has been compared to specific language impairment (SLI), a language disorder ...

A D D R E S S Correspondence should be addressed to: N I C O L A B O T T I N G , Centre for the Study of Language Impairments, Centre for Educational Needs, School of Education, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK keywords communication disorders; pragmatic language impairment