Children and Young People with Written Language Disorders

Pragmatic Skills in School-Age Children With Primary Language Impairment and Language-Learning Disabilities

“…First, the breadth and depth of research that focuses on student populations with well-defined and properly TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JULY-SEPTEMBER 2023 identified forms of LLD (e.g., dyslexia, dysgraphia, combined) needs to greatly increase. Although perhaps not surprising that the bulk of research on pragmatics deals with children identified with DLD, the importance of pragmatics for reading and writing development and performance (e.g., Troia, 2011Troia, , 2021 warrants exploration of the challenges students with LLD may or may not face in this area and how difficulties with pragmatics impact their literacy skills. Second, the development and evaluation of interventions to address one or multiple components of pragmatics has received little attention in the research-profiling the pragmatic difficulties experienced by children with disabilities is valuable, but practitioners also need validated, evidence-based interventions to tackle pragmatic deficits in their students.…”

“…Pragmatics reflects language use in varied contexts to exploit the implicit and explicit meanings of language to achieve socially motivated communication goals (Green et al, 2014; O'Neill, 2014). It refers to an integrative group of skills, including (a) the ability to use discourse structures and rules to initiate, maintain, shift, terminate, and repair communication with others; (b) the appropriate understanding and use of a variety of communicative intentions and pragmatic functions (e.g., requesting information to fulfill a heuristic function); (c) presupposing shared understandings between oneself and one's communicative partner(s) given each person's unique perspective, a set of interactional rules, and circumstances in which these rules may or may not be adhered; and (d) the understanding and use of nonliteral and figurative language that helps transmit cultural values and norms in a society (Demchick & Day, 2016; Farnsworth, 2018; Lightbown & Spada, 2013; Mackie & Law, 2014; O'Neill, 2014; Troia, 2011, 2021; Wiener & Schneider, 2002).…”

“…Aside from two older meta-analyses described later, a comprehensive review of the literature on pragmatics in these populations has not been undertaken and, given the importance of pragmatic competence for socialization and academic achievement (e.g., Troia, 2011Troia, , 2021, having a clear understanding of the pragmatic strengths and weaknesses of children with language TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JULY-SEPTEMBER 2023 and literacy concerns is warranted. A published meta-analysis completed by Lapadat (1991) of 33 studies investigating the pragmatic language skills of 3-to 12-year-old children with primary language impairments and learning disabilities found these children demonstrated pragmatic deficits when compared with their typical peers with a mean effect size of −0.52 across settings, conversational partners, age groups, and types of pragmatic skills measured.…”

10 Dyslexia and Pragmatic Skills

“…Dyslexia has complex manifestations and it rarely occurs in isolation. For this reason, one of the persistent criticisms with respect to any experimental conclusion is that generalizations are hardly possible, unless the assessment of pragmatic skills is accompanied by a thorough evaluation of a complex set of cognitive and communicative aspects other than dyslexia which may be responsible for the difficulties observed (see for instance Troia, 2021). The vast majority of the studies discussed in sections 3 and 4 have attempted to operate increasingly finer distinctions among the participants and reached important results which advance our knowledge of the communicative profile of people with dyslexia.…”

“…This chapter presents an overview of research on pragmatic efficiency and dyslexia. To the best of our knowledge, the studies which have discussed the impact of the disorder on pragmatic competence are still relatively few (Cappelli et al, 2018;Cappelli, 2019;Cardillo et al, 2018;Ferrara et al, 2020;Griffiths, 2007;Hu et al, 2019;Kasirer & Mashal, 2017;Kumari et al, 2016;Lam & Ho, 2014;Vender, 2017; for a review, see Troia, 2021), and mostly focus on discourse organization and the comprehension of figurative language. However, this rapidly growing body of research allows for some preliminary conclusions.…”