Idiom understanding competence of Spanish children with Specific Language Impairment and Pragmatic Language Impairment
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.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Figurative language and idiom understanding
- Idiom understanding in children with SLI and PLI
- Aims and hypothesis
- Methodology
- Materials
- Language measures
- Idiom understanding tasks
- 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
References (23)
References
Ackerman, B. P. 1982. On comprehending idioms: Do children get the picture? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 33, 439–454.
American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM- 5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gernsbacher, M. A., & Robertson, R. R. W. 1999. The role of suppression in figurative language comprehension. Journal of Pragmatics 31, 1616–1630.
Glucksberg, S. 2006. Beyond literal meanings: The psychology of allusion. Psychological Science 2(3), 146–152.
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.
Kerbel, D., & Grunwell, P. 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.
Levorato, M. C., Nesi, B., & Cacciari, C. 2004. Reading comprehension and understanding idiomatic expressions: A developmental study. Brain and Language 9, 303–314.
Mendoza, E., Carballo, G., Muñoz, J., & Fresneda, M. D. 2005. Test de comprensión de estructuras gramaticales (
CEG
). Madrid: TEA Ediciones.
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.
Norbury, C. F. 2004. Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, 1179–1193.
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.
Raven, J., Raven, J. C., & Court, J. H. 1998. Coloured progressive matrices. Oxford: Oxford Psychologists Press.
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.
Saborit, C., & Julián, J. P. 2005. L’avaluació del llenguatge infantil.
ELI. Universitat Jaume I de Castelló (UJI). Col·lecció: Educació.
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.
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.
Winner, E., & Leekman, S. 1991. Distinguishing irony from deception: Understanding the speaker’s second-order intention. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 9, 257–270.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Andrés-Roqueta, Clara, Raquel Flores-Buils & Alfonso Igualada
2024.
Validation of PleaseApp: a digital tool for the assessment of receptive pragmatic abilities in children with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Frontiers in Psychiatry 15
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.