No abstract

Social communication deficits are becoming more evident and better understood as our awareness, diagnosis, and treatment advance. Additionally, social language difficulties related to Autism Spectrum Disorder are becoming more distinguished and better understood.The current study aims to evaluate six key pragmatic language constructs introduced by The Clinical Assessment of Pragmatics and comparatively analyse these six constructs in three groups -adolescents who present as: typically developing, present with pragmatic language impairment, and present with high functioning autism. The six constructs analysed include: instrumental performance, social context appraisal, paralinguistic decoding, instrumental performance, affective expression, and paralinguistic signals. Results of the current study revealed significant differences across groups of students on receptive and expressive pragmatic language tasks. Students with HFA and PLI demonstrated adequate performance on instrumental in nature tasks such as, demonstrating politeness and requesting for help. As expected, students with HFA and PLI exhibited significant difficulties on higher order pragmatics tasks, such as the use of affective language, perception of irony, expression of sorrow, and demonstration of support. The key findings of the current study revealed that there are three constructs that could differentiate the understanding, assessment, and treatment of social language in students with PLI vs. HFA. Students with PLI and HFA may differ in their understanding and use of the skills in the following constructs: Social Context Appraisal, Paralinguistic Decoding, and Paralinguistic Cues.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Asperger Syndrome (AS), and Social Communication Disorder (SCD) have deficits in the area of pragmatic (i.e., social) language. Individuals may have difficulty staying on topic, changing topic, providing appropriate comments/questions, using appropriate eye contact, and interpreting and utilizing nonverbal language such as facial expressions, gestures, as well as, changes in prosody/intonation. As speech and language assessments have become more distinguished, intervention approaches have also become more specialized. The current study aims to evaluate a visual auditory bombardment intervention (VABI) designed to target pragmatic language and compare this intervention to a traditional video modeling (VMI) condition, as well as a no-treatment condition (CON). Results of the current study revealed significant differences between the VABI and CON groups in the areas of paralinguistic decoding and paralinguistic signals scores. On the paralinguistic signal measure, the VMI group demonstrated a small effect size compared to the CON group. Additionally, results revealed that the VABI group's post-intervention scores were larger than the CON group. There was a significant effect size on all social language compression measures for individuals in the VABI group compared to the CON group, and a negligible effect size for the difference between the VMI and CON groups. The key findings of this study are both the CAPs and CASL-2 are effective tools in assessing individuals with pragmatic language deficits. Additionally, the VABI intervention proved to be an effective treatment approach of student's understanding and use of affective expression, paralinguistic decoding, and paralinguistic signals.

Pragmatic language deficits are becoming more apparent and can be seen early on in life in individuals who present with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Asperger Syndrome (AS), and Social Communication Disorder (SCD) or Pragmatic Language Impairment (PLI). As our awareness and understanding of social communication disorders advance, so does our assessment and treatment of social language impairments. The current study aims to explore how paralinguistic cues (i.e., facial expressions, intonation/prosody), affective expression, and social context skills develop across the lifetime in students who are typically developing and students with ASD, AS, and PLI. The Clinical Assessment of Pragmatics (CAPs) was given to all students to assess current pragmatic language function. Four subtests from the CAPs were comparatively analyzed in individuals between the ages of 7:0 to 15:11 who present as: typically developing, present with PLI, and present with high functioning autism (HFA). The four key constructs analyzed for the purpose of this study include: affective expression, paralinguistic decoding, paralinguistic signals, and social context appraisal. Results of the current study revealed significant differences in both the typically developing group and PLI group across all ages in nonverbal language (paralinguistic decoding and paralinguistic signals) and social competence (affective expressive and social context appraisal) tasks. Additionally, the current study revealed that students with PLI disorder acquire social language skills in a similar pattern to typically developing students, however, at a delayed rate. Students with HFA did not appear to follow the same pattern of social language acquisition as typically developing students. Students with PLI and HFA may differ in their understanding and acquisition of nonverbal and social competence skills.