Children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and pragmatic language impairment: Differences and similarities in pragmatic ability.

Holck P, Nettelbladt U, Sandberg AD. Children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and pragmatic language impairment: Differences and similarities in pragmatic ability.
Research in Developmental Disabilities. 2009 Feb 25.

Pragmatically related abilities were studied in three clinical groups
of children from 5 to 11 years of age; children with cerebral palsy
(CP; n = 10), children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus (SBH;
n = 10) and children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI;
n = 10), in order to explore pragmatic abilities within each group. A
range of pragmatic, linguistic and cognitive assessments were
performed, and comparisons between the groups were made. In
addition, connections between variables were studied. The most
salient result was the many similarities and the lack of clear
boundaries between the groups. The only significant differences
found concerned short-term memory and inference ability, where
all three groups experienced problems but to varying extent.
Different patterns of variance were found in the groups, indicating
that different underlying abilities such as reception of grammar,
inferential comprehension and lexical comprehension seem to
affect pragmatic ability in somewhat different ways. The results
suggest that the children with CP and SBH in this study shared a
number of pragmatically related traits, being more similar than
would be expected according to earlier research. Finally, it is
suggested that pragmatic assessment is further subdivided into a
socially versus a linguistically related assessment.

PMID: 19249190