Social Communication Skills of Children: A Look at Linguistic-Pragmatics and Social-Pragmatics

Abstract

Recently, some researchers proposed that pragmatic (i.e., social communication) tasks can be distinguished into two categories: linguistic-pragmatics (contexts where structural language skills such as vocabulary are required) and social-pragmatics (contexts where, in addition to language skills, an individual needs to use Theory of Mind; ToM; Andrés-Roqueta & Katsos, 2017). In this study, we developed a pragmatic task to examine the contribution of structural language and ToM to pragmatics in neurotypical and neurodivergent children. The task was also designed to be appropriate for children from diverse cultural backgrounds. Participants were 26 non-autistic and 5 autistic English-speaking 4- to 8-year-olds. The new task underwent a comprehensive development process based on child responses and expert feedback. Results from this study provide novel information on pragmatic assessment through the lens of the new task. This thesis also contributes to our understanding of the socio-cognitive underpinnings of pragmatic differences between autistic and non-autistic children.