Pragmatic difficulties in children with Specific Language Impairment

Most of the children having Specific Language Impairment (SLI) exhibit pragmatic difficulties that are often overlooked while their communication skills are being evaluated. Identifying pragmatic needs in such children can be lengthy and indeterminate as many of such children don't quite "fit" into a definite diagnostic category. This study aimed at identifying and clarifying the nature of pragmatic difficulties in a group of children with Specific Language Impairment by comparing their pragmatic skills with those of a group of normally developing children using a simple Pragmatic Screening protocol hoping that this would aid in reaching a better understanding of the nature of pragmatic difficulties in such children. The present study examined the pragmatic profiles of 60 age and gender matched native Cairo-Egyptian Arabic speaking children (with age range 4-6 years old). The children were divided into two groups; Group A and Group B. Group A included 30 children with normal language development whereas Group B included 30 children who had been previously diagnosed as having Specific Language Impairment. For each subject, history taking followed by audiological and psychometric evaluation to rule out the existence of any hearing difficulties or mental deficiency was performed. Afterwards, each child under study was subjected to the Arabic Pragmatic Screening tool [1]. For each child, the screening was scored by three readers; average scores were obtained and statistically analyzed. All the values obtained by the control group were found to be significantly higher than those obtained by the SLI group except for some non-verbal paralinguistic skills where non-significant differences were found between the two groups. Through the ROC curve, cut off level for Total Pragmatic Score (TPS) was found to be less than or equal to 78.16, i.e. 4-6 year old children with a TPS equal to or less than 78.16 were considered to have pragmatic difficulties. Thorough screening of pragmatic skills while evaluating the communication skills of children with specific Language Impairment should be seriously considered.