Abstract
There are few well-standardized measures of conversational breakdown in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The study’s objective was to develop a scale for measuring pragmatic impairments in conversations of individuals with ASD. We analyzed 46 semi-structured conversations of children and adolescents with high-functioning ASD using a functional linguistic paradigm. Five constructs were developed that assessed difficulties related to the pragmatics of conversation: atypical intonation; semantic drift; terseness; pedantic speech; perseveration. The scale shows good inter-rater reliability and variation in the scales is not simply a reflection of IQ or language competence. This tool represents a way of characterizing language use in ASD and is an initial step towards develo** a tool to evaluate change in degree of social impairments in conversation.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation and by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant to J. de Villiers. We want to thank the children and families who participated in this project.
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Appendices
Appendix (details can be found on the following website: www.offordcentre.com): Conventions
Child’s utterances appear in bold.
Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
CHI | Child |
EXP | Experimenter |
# | Pause |
<> | Overlap** Content |
[>] | Overlap Follows |
[<] | Overlap Precedes |
[!] | Stress Placement on preceding lexical item |
Examples
Topic Switching
Ex:
EXP: what other what other kinds of trucks do you like?
EXP: oil trucks cement trucks what else?
CHI: um what others what and what others.
CHI: would you would you go on a train?
EXP: would I go on a train?
EXP: oh I’d love to go on a train.
CHI: what kind of train?
CHI: what kind?
EXP: um I think a passenger train.
CHI: that’s a black train.
CHI: what happens if you go on the the midnight express?
Terseness
Ex:
EXP: are you having a good day today?
CHI: # yes.
EXP: good.
EXP: do you like the things we’ve been doing?
CHI: yes.
EXP: good.
EXP: what have you liked the best?
CHI: # playing with the cubes.
EXP: you found that quite easy.
EXP: you were very good at that weren’t you?
CHI: # yes.
Pedantic Speech
Ex:
CHI: question.
CHI: how big is the Statue of Liberty?
CHI: is it bigger than the Eiffel Tower same size as the Eiffel Tower or is the Eiffel Tower bigger than the Statue of Liberty?
Perseveration
Ex:
EXP: <oh> [<] she’s that’s because she’s a three year old <right> [>] ?
CHI: <then> [<].
CHI: I uh went up.
CHI: and I saw the yellowish going south went by on the other side.
CHI: and the yellowish going north on Saint Clair.
CHI: an(d) I saw # no subway at Saint Clair.
CHI: an(d) the yellowish going north left Saint Clair.
CHI: the yellowish goin(g) north went into the tunnel.
Pausing
Ex:
CHI: I watched that show.
CHI: Free Willy.
EXP: did you watch it at home?
EXP: hm?
CHI: ## yeah.
(## indicates a long pause)
Attention to Outside Environment
Ex:
EXP: when I went to get you you were in a different room today.
CHI: okay
CHI: watch this.
CHI: di # star command come it
CHI: do it wi(th) me.
CHI: ## draw [!]
Atypical Stress Selection
Ex:
“and my family usually orders [!] pizza on Fridays [!]”.
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de Villiers, J., Fine, J., Ginsberg, G. et al. Brief Report: A Scale for Rating Conversational Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 37, 1375–1380 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0264-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0264-1