Social Communication and pragmatic skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Language Disorder

Codas. 2021 Dec 17;34(2):e20210075. doi: 10.1590/2317-1782/20212021075. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Purpose: to assess the pragmatic and social communicative abilities of children with Typical Language Development (TLD), Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

Methods: Participants were 40 parents and 29 teachers of 40 children ages between 3 and 6 years. Ten children had DLD, ten had ASD and 20 had typical development. All participants answered to the questionnaire of the "Assessment of Pragmatic Language and Social Communication - APLSC - parent and professional reports - beta research version. Data were submitted to statistical analysis.

Results: The assessment tool was useful in identifying the difference in performance of children with different social communicative profiles.

Conclusion: Children with ASD presented social and pragmatic impairments that were more significant than those presented by children with DLD. However, both children with ASD and with DLD presented more social pragmatic difficulties than children with TLD.

Objetivo: investigar as habilidades pragmáticas e de comunicação social de crianças com Desenvolvimento Típico de Linguagem (DTL), Transtorno do Espectro do Autismo (TEA) e Distúrbio do Desenvolvimento da Linguagem (DDL).

Método: Participaram 40 pais e 29 professores de 40 crianças com idades entre 3 e 6 anos. Dez crianças tinham DDL, 10 tinham TEA e 20 tinham DTL. Todos os participantes responderam ao questionário “Assessment of Pragmatic Language and Social Communication”(APLSC – Avaliação de linguagem pragmática e comunicação social) – relatórios de pais e profissionais – versão beta. Os dados foram submetidos a análise estatística.

Resultados: O instrumento de avaliação foi útil na identificação das diferenças no desempenho de crianças com diferentes perfis de comunicação social.

Conclusão: Crianças com TEA apresentaram dificuldades pragmáticas e sociais mais significativos do que as crianças com DDL. Entretanto, tanto as crianças com DDL quanto as com TEA apresentaram mais dificuldades comunicativas e sociais do que as crianças com DTL.

MeSH terms

  • Autism Spectrum Disorder*
  • Child
  • Child, Preschool
  • Communication
  • Humans
  • Language Development Disorders*
  • Language Tests
  • Social Skills