Brief Report: A Scale for Rating Conversational Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Authors: Villiers, Jessica; Fine, Jonathan; Ginsberg, Gary; Vaccarella, Liezanne; Szatmari, Peter¹

Source: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Volume 37, Number 7, August 2007 , pp. 1375-1380(6)

Publisher: Springer

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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 developing a tool to evaluate change in degree of social impairments in conversation.

Keywords: ASD; Asperger syndrome; Pragmatic difficulties; Linguistic analysis; Conversation

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1007/s10803-006-0264-1

Affiliations: 1: Email: szatmar@mcmaster.ca

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