Assessing Pragmatic Abilities of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This session will describe the development of a protocol to the assessment of the pragmatic abilities of children with autism spectrum disorders. The study included its testing and the comparison of the results with those of the Functional Communicative Profile (FCP). The assessment of pragmatic abilities is an important aspect of the diagnostic process of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and language intervention proposals to this population. Recent studies continue to emphasize how difficult it is to determine standardized models to the assessment of pragmatic abilities. Several authors state that samples of spontaneous communication provide the most reliable data about individual abilities and that the concepts of appropriate and inappropriate vary in different cultures and contexts.

Methods: The study was conducted au a reference speech-language service associated to a school of medicine on a majority country. Participants were 62 children, ages 2 to 12 years without prior diagnosis of any sensorial loss or genetic syndrome and with ASD diagnosis based on the DSM-5 criteria by psychiatrists and neurologists. Based on a video sample of spontaneous interaction between the child and a familiar interlocutor, speech-language pathologists answered the 29 questions of the protocol.

The results were analyzed according to their association with the Functional Communicative Profile, routinely used in the service, that identifies the communicative initiative, means and functions.

Results: Only data about communication interactivity and use of verbal communicative means presented significant correlations with the language performance verified by the proposed protocol. The protocol allowed the supposition that larger experience with the child may provide more information about the child’s pragmatic performance. The analysis of the use of the protocol to verify the outcomes of six-month language intervention processes also lead to relevant correlations. Just one of the 29 questions did not result in associations with any of the variables studied.

Conclusion: So far, the results are not enough to consider that the isolated use of this tool will provide the necessary information regarding language assessment and follow-up of intervention process. But it may complement the information obtained with other clinical tools.