Pragmatic language profiles in autism and Williams syndrome.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to compare pragmatic language functioning in children with autism and Williams syndrome using The Children's Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2), a standardized parent report measure. Previous research has suggested pervasive pragmatic language impairment in autism and a profile of relative pragmatic strength and weakness in Williams syndrome. The emerging literature on pragmatics in Williams syndrome has suggested a possible need for pragmatics interventions like those used in autism (Laws & Bishop, 2004). This study compared overall communication and pragmatic language functioning in school-aged children with autism and Williams syndrome and included a group of younger, typically developing school-aged children to assess the construct validity of the CCC-2. Results suggested that the ten subscales of the CCC-2 showed good internal consistency in the entire sample. As expected, the typical group demonstrated typical communication and pragmatic language functioning, while both clinical groups showed significant impairment in overall communication abilities, overall pragmatic impairment, and overall pragmatic language functioning and were indistinguishable from each other on these dimensions. However, the Williams syndrome group showed a trend of slightly better overall pragmatic functioning compared to the autism spectrum disorder group, when controlling for expressive age equivalent. Additionally, some, but not all children with Williams syndrome and autism spectrum disorder were identified as having a pragmatic language unpairment using the CCC-2. However, derivation of another variable indicative of overall pragmatic language functioning suggested that almost all children in both groups evidence some degree of difficulty in overall functioning. Examination of the profiles between autism spectrum disorder and Williams syndrome revealed equivalent performances on most of the subscales of the CCC-2, however better performance in the Williams syndrome group was found on the Stereotyped Language and Nonverbal Communication subscales. A trend of better performance in Williams syndrome was also noted on the Social Relations subscale. Further, overall pragmatic language functioning was strongly associated with the adaptive Socialization Standard Score of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales/II, providing evidence for convergent validity of the CCC-2 with another tool measuring a similar construct. Clinical and research implications were provided.