RE: Pragmatic Language

[Guest guest]

If any of you are having trouble getting speech services for your kiddo because

formalized testing shows them to be above average to average, I found this 2010

Yale study that says one standard deviation (or 15 pts) between Antonyms and

Pragmatic Judgement indicates communication issues in HFA/Asperger's...Can you

tell I'm gathering info for an ARD?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952952/pdf/nihms172987.pdf

Individuals with higher functioning ASD often fail to qualify for

speech–language services because they present strong verbal skills and large

vocabularies and score well on formal language assessments. Nonetheless, social

communication has often been considered an area of weakness for these

individuals, which the results of this study confirm. Whereas participants in

this sample performed at above-average levels on CASL subtests that measured

formal aspects of language, their performance on the Pragmatic Judgment and

Inferences CASL subtests were near the bottom of the normal range and were close

to one standard deviation below scores on the Antonyms CASL test. Students' t

tests revealed significant differences between Antonyms and each of the other

two scores. (We are not suggesting that the Antonyms subtest will always be the

best indicator of an individual's formal language functioning level. Clinical

judgment should be used to select subtests that are indicative of the

individual's formal language functioning level for comparison.) This significant

deviation provides a form of documentation that can be used in conjunction with

teacher and parent observations to display the need for communication services

for high-functioning individuals with these syndromes.

…these findings do suggest that a within-test comparison of scores on the CASL,

in particular a contrast between scores on a lexical/semantic measure such as

the Antonyms subtest and subtests such as Pragmatic Judgment and Inferences, to

adaptive use of communication can be a useful component of a comprehensive

assessment of individuals with higher functioning ASD. When working with

students whose pragmatic skills appear to be significantly discrepant from other

language skills, and for whom it would be difficult to justify

language services on other grounds, these findings can provide a tool for

documenting the serious social communicative deficits so commonly seen in this

population.