Neuroscience

Autism

Pragmatics

Cognitive psychology

Autism spectrum disorder

Linguistic competence

Developmental psychology

Philosophy

Cognition

Linguistics

Psychology

Language development

Theory of mind

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research

Purpose Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and children with developmental language disorder (DLD) face challenges with pragmatics, but the nature and sources of these difficulties are not fully understood yet. The purpose of this study was to compare the competence of children with ASD and children with DLD in two pragmatics tasks that place different demands on theory of mind (ToM) and structural language. Method Twenty Spanish-speaking children with ASD, 20 with DLD, and 40 age- and language-matched children with neurotypical development were assessed using two pragmatics tasks: a linguistic pragmatics task, which requires competence with structural language, and a social pragmatics task, which requires competence with ToM as well. Results For linguistic pragmatics, the ASD group performed similarly to the DLD and language-matched groups, and performance was predicted by structural language. For social pragmatics, the ASD group performed lower than the DLD and language-matched groups, and perfo...

A Distinction Between Linguistic and Social Pragmatics Helps the Precise Characterization of Pragmatic Challenges in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders and Developmental Language Disorder