Cover not available
Part of
Atypical Language Development in Romance Languages
Edited by Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla, Lucía Buil-Legaz, Raúl López-Penadés, Victor A. Sanchez-Azanza and Daniel Adrover-Roig
[Not in series 223] 2019
► pp. 113–126

Idiom understanding competence of Spanish children with Specific Language Impairment and Pragmatic Language Impairment

| Universitat Jaume I
| Universitat Jaume I

Children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) have problems understanding idioms. However, whether similar difficulties are present in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and which cognitive and linguistic factors are implied, is still not fully addressed. In this chapter the competence to understand idioms in Spanish children with SLI and PLI is compared to a typically developing group, using a verbal and a visual condition. Visual idioms challenged both children with SLI and PLI, but verbal indioms only challenged children with PLI. Also, their performance was related to their grammar and pragmatics skills, but not to the vocabulary ones. However, only children with PLI improved their competence on the visual condition. Practical implications for diagnosing and designing interventions are discussed.

Keywords: idioms, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Pragmatic Language Impairment (PLI), pragmatics, figurative language, Social Communication Disorder (SCD)
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Figurative language and idiom understanding
    • Idiom understanding in children with SLI and PLI
    • Aims and hypothesis
  • Methodology
    • Participants
  • Materials
    • Language measures
    • Idiom understanding tasks
      • a.Verbal condition
    • Visual condition
    • Procedure
  • Results
    • I. Between-group comparisons on key and related measures
    • II. Within-group comparisons between verbal and visual conditions
    • III. Correlations between idiom understanding (verbal condition) and language measures
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 11 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.223.07and
References
Ackerman, B. P.
1982 On comprehending idioms: Do children get the picture? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 33, 439–454. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
American Psychiatric Association
2013 Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM- 5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Andrés-Roqueta, C., & Katsos, N.
2017 The contribution of grammar, vocabulary and Theory of Mind in pragmatic language competence in children with autistic spectrum disorders. Frontiers in Psychology 8, 996. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M.
2004 Diagnostic dilemmas in specific language impairment. In L. Verhoeven & J. van Balkom (Eds.), Classification of developmental language disorders (pp. 309–326). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., & Adams, C.
1989 Conversational characteristics of children with semantic-pragmatic disorder, II: What features lead to a judgement of inappropriacy? British Journal of Disorders of Communication 24 (3): 241–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., & Norbury, C. F.
2002 Exploring the borderlands of autistic disorder and specific language impairment: A study using standardised diagnostic instruments. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 43(7), 917–929. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., & Rosenbloom, L.
1987 Childhood language disorders: Classification and overview. In W. Yule & M. Rutter (Eds.), Language development and disorders. London: MacKeith Press.Google Scholar
Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N., & Knox, E.
2001 Follow-up of children attending infant language units: outcomes at 11 years of age. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 36(2), 207–219. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gernsbacher, M. A., & Robertson, R. R. W.
1999 The role of suppression in figurative language comprehension. Journal of Pragmatics 31, 1616–1630. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Glucksberg, S.
2006 Beyond literal meanings: The psychology of allusion. Psychological Science 2(3), 146–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kerbel, D., & Grunwell, P.
1998a A study of idiom comprehension in children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties, Part I: Task effects on the assessment of idiom comprehension in children. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 33, 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998b A study of idiom comprehension in children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties, Part II: Between-groups results and discussion. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 33, 23–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levorato, M. C., Nesi, B., & Cacciari, C.
2004 Reading comprehension and understanding idiomatic expressions: A developmental study. Brain and Language 9, 303–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mendoza, E., Carballo, G., Muñoz, J., & Fresneda, M. D.
2005 Test de comprensión de estructuras gramaticales ( CEG ). Madrid: TEA Ediciones.Google Scholar
Nippold, M. A., & Duthie, J. K.
2003 Mental imagery and idiom comprehension: A comparison of school-age children and adults. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46, 788–799. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norbury, C. F.
2004 Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, 1179–1193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pouscoulous, N.
2014 The elevator’s buttocks. Metaphorical abilities in children. In D. Matthews (Ed.), Pragmatic development in first language acquisition (pp. 239–259). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Raven, J., Raven, J. C., & Court, J. H.
1998 Coloured progressive matrices. Oxford: Oxford Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Rinaldi, W.
2000 Pragmatic comprehension in secondary school-aged students with specific developmental language disorder. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 35, 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saborit, C., & Julián, J. P.
2005 L’avaluació del llenguatge infantil. ELI. Universitat Jaume I de Castelló (UJI). Col·lecció: Educació.Google Scholar
Titone, D. A., & Connine, C. M.
1994 Descriptive norms for 171 idiomatic expressions: Familiarity, compositionality, predictability, and literality. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 9, 247–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vance, M., & Wells, B.
1994 The wrong end of the stick: Language-impaired children’s understanding of nonliteral language. Child Language Teaching and Therapy 10, 23–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winner, E., & Leekman, S.
1991 Distinguishing irony from deception: Understanding the speaker’s second-order intention. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 9, 257–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar