The impact of subtle language and communication difficulties on the daily lives of autistic children without intellectual disability: Parent perspectives.

Background: Autistic children without intellectual disability will likely experience higher level language and communication difficulties. These may appear subtle, in that they are not immediately evident to those who do not know the child well and may not manifest in all environments. Because of this, the impact of such difficulties may be underestimated.

Preliminary data on the development of emotion vocabulary in typically developing children (5-13 years) using an experimental psycholinguistic measure.

Introduction: Vocabulary of emotion is integral to emotional development and emotional intelligence is associated with improved mental health outcomes. Many language disordered groups experience emotional difficulties; Developmental Language Disorders, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and autism. However, (as in the case of autism) research tends to focus on assessing recognition of emotional states, rather than exploring labeling skills.

A Subtle Profile With a Significant Impact: Language and Communication Difficulties for Autistic Females Without Intellectual Disability.

The presentation of autism in females is poorly understood, which is thought to contribute to missed or later- age diagnosis, especially for those without intellectual disability. Dedicated research into social and behavioral differences has indicated a specific female phenotype of autism. However, less has been done to explore language and communication profiles, despite known sex/gender differences in typically developing populations.

In their own words: The impact of subtle language and communication difficulties as described by autistic girls and boys without intellectual disability.

Subtle language and communication difficulties are experienced by many autistic individuals even when they do not have additional learning disabilities. These difficulties may affect a person's day-to-day living, social relationships and emotional well-being. However, currently, there is not much research into this topic.

Assessment of inference-making in children using comprehension questions and story retelling: Effect of text modality and a story presentation format.

Background: Reading and listening comprehension are essential for accessing the school curriculum. Inference-making is integral to successful comprehension and involves integrating information between clauses (local coherence) and integrating information with background knowledge (global coherence). We require appropriate methods to assess comprehension and inference-making in order to identify areas of difficulty and provide appropriate support.

Observational and Reported Measures of Language and Pragmatics in Young People with Autism: A Comparison of Respondent Data and Gender Profiles.

Female children with autism spectrum disorder (FwASD) and performance intelligence quotient (PIQ) over 70 were compared with male children with ASD (MwASD) and typically developing (TD) controls (age 8-11 years) using a range of language and pragmatic measures. Functional ability was assessed using clinical observations and parent, teacher and self-reports. Results were compared between measures, and with direct assessments of language and pragmatics, in order to identify potential biases.

Speaking the Same Language? A Preliminary Investigation, Comparing the Language and Communication Skills of Females and Males with High-Functioning Autism.

Understanding the nature of language and communication disorders in High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) populations may provide insight into why females are more likely than males to go undiagnosed. Language and communication skills were compared between 13 females and 13 males (aged 8.11-11.

Assessing school-aged children's inference-making: the effect of story test format in listening comprehension.

Background: Comprehension is critical for classroom learning and educational success. Inferences are integral to good comprehension: successful comprehension requires the listener to generate local coherence inferences, which involve integrating information between clauses, and global coherence inferences, which involve integrating textual information with background knowledge to infer motivations, themes, etc. A central priority for the diagnosis of comprehension difficulties and our understanding of why these difficulties arise is the development of valid assessment instruments.

Integrating Language, Pragmatics, and Social Intervention in a Single-Subject Case Study of a Child With a Developmental Social Communication Disorder.

Purpose: This clinical focus article presents an illustration of a complex communication intervention, the Social Communication Intervention Programme (SCIP), as delivered to a child who has a social communication disorder (SCD). The SCIP intervention combined language processing and pragmatic and social understanding therapies in a program of individualized therapy activities and in close liaison with families.

Method: The study used an enhanced AB single-subject design in which an 8-year-old child with an SCD participated in 20 therapy sessions with a specialist speech-language pathologist.

Predictors of reading comprehension ability in primary school-aged children who have pragmatic language impairment.

Purpose: Children who have pragmatic language impairment (CwPLI) have difficulties with the use of language in social contexts and show impairments in above-sentence level language tasks. Previous studies have found that typically developing children's reading comprehension (RC) is predicted by reading accuracy and spoken sentence level comprehension (SLC). This study explores the predictive ability of these factors and above-sentence level comprehension (ASLC) on RC skills in a group of CwPLI.

Performance of children with social communication disorder on the Happé Strange Stories: Physical and mental state responses and relationship to language ability.

Unlabelled: This study investigated whether a modified scoring method was useful for examining the ability of children with social communication disorder (CwSCD) to understand non-literal language and use mental state responses on the Happé Strange Stories (HSS) task. CwSCD and a control group of children with typical language development (CwTLD) completed 10 of the original HSS. CwSCD scored significantly lower on the HSS task than did CwTLD and were much less likely to produce mental state responses.

Short-term and working memory skills in primary school-aged children with specific language impairment and children with pragmatic language impairment: phonological, linguistic and visuo-spatial aspects.

Background: Children with specific language impairment (CwSLI) are consistently reported to have short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) difficulties.

Aim: To compare STM and WM abilities in CwSLI with children with pragmatic language impairment (CwPLI).

Methods & Procedures: Primary school-aged CwSLI (n= 12) and CwPLI (n= 23) were assessed on measures of STM and WM.

Implementation of a manualized communication intervention for school-aged children with pragmatic and social communication needs in a randomized controlled trial: the Social Communication Intervention Project.

Background: Speech-language interventions are often complex in nature, involving multiple observations, variable outcomes and individualization in treatment delivery. The accepted procedure associated with randomized controlled trials (RCT) of such complex interventions is to develop and implement a manual of intervention in order that reliable treatment delivery can be achieved.

Aims: To present the rationale, structure and content of an intensive manualized intervention as implemented within an RCT for children with complex pragmatic and social communication needs; to investigate factors associated with implementation in a mainstream school environment; and to determine treatment fidelity.

The Social Communication Intervention Project: a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of speech and language therapy for school-age children who have pragmatic and social communication problems with or without autism spectrum disorder.

Background: Children who show disproportionate difficulty with the pragmatic as compared with the structural aspects of language are described as having pragmatic language impairment (PLI) or social communication disorder (SCD). Some children who have PLI also show mild social impairments associated with high-functioning autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). There is little robust evidence of effectiveness of speech-language interventions which target the language, pragmatic or social communication needs of these children.

Literacy skills in primary school-aged children with pragmatic language impairment: a comparison with children with specific language impairment.

Background: Children with pragmatic language impairment (CwPLI) are characterized by difficulties with the interpersonal use of language in social contexts and they possess a range of language difficulties that affect their educational attainment. Since literacy skills are central to this attainment, one way of identifying appropriate support needs for CwPLI would be to profile their reading and writing skills as a group.

Aims: To investigate the word reading, non-word reading, reading comprehension, and written expression skills of CwPLI and a comparison group of children with specific language impairment (CwSLI).