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Friendship and Pragmatic Skills During Spontaneous Peer Conversation
In typical development, early peer talk is crucial for pragmatic development. Peer talk offers children a wide range of opportunities for mutual learning of social-interactive and linguistic skills (Blum-Kulka & Snow, 2004). The pragmatic deficit, reflected in remarkably deficient conversational capabilities, is considered the hallmark of the language deficit in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Stefanatos & Baron, 2011); yet, spontaneous peer talk in preschoolers with ASD was rarely explored.
Objectives:
The current study’s major aim was to close this knowledge gap about characteristics of the pragmatic deficit in ASD by examining spontaneous peer talk in preschoolers with HFASD versus preschoolers with TYP. We were also interested in learning about the role of the interaction partner as contributing to pragmatic capabilities, due to prior studies ' reports of higher mutual social engagement, responsiveness, and reciprocal verbal exchanges in interactions with friends versus nonfriends (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). Thus, we compared peer talk according to the partner’s friendship status (friend/nonfriend).
Methods:
We conducted comparative assessment of spontaneous peer talk during 10-minute free-play scenarios in preschoolers with high-functioning ASD (HFASD; n=27) versus with typical development (n=30). Groups were matched on SES, verbal/nonverbal MA, IQ, and CA. Correlations with CA, IQ, VMA, and NVMA were examined. We compared the two groups' interactions with a friend partner versus a non-friend partner; additionally, in the HFASD group, we examined interactions with a typical partner (mixed dyads) versus a partner with HFASD (non-mixed dyads). Children's conversations were videotaped and coded to tap pragmatic capabilities and conversational quality.
Results:
As predicted, analysis of observed spontaneous peer conversations revealed a more severe pragmatic deficit in HFASD versus more intact pragmatic capabilities in TYP, for almost all of the pragmatic behaviors and conversational quality dimensions. The most severely affected pragmatic behaviors in HFASD included verbal behaviors (e.g., limited reciprocal conversation, unresponsiveness to interlocutor’s cues, unusual intonation) and nonverbal social-gesture behaviors (e.g., inappropriate facial expression, poor eye contact and gaze).
However, for preschoolers with HFASD, 30% of specific pragmatic behaviors were more intact in interactions with friends than in interactions with nonfriends, versus only 18.5% of specific behaviors in the TYP group. In HFASD, interactions with friends were characterized by longer reciprocal conversations that were more responsive to the partner’s information-seeking and emotional state and were less overly talkative (pragmatic behaviors) than interactions with nonfriends. Moreover, interactions with friends showed less stereotypic discourse and mispronunciations (speech and prosody aspect) as well as more appropriate facial expressions and eye contact (paralinguistic category) than interactions with nonfriends. Thus, altogether, friendship may enable children to converse in a more socially complex and co-regulated way.
Also, children with higher cognitive capabilities, especially in the HFASD group, demonstrated more intact pragmatic capacities
Conclusions:
Despite the robust pragmatic deficit in HFASD, reflected in conversational capabilities, involvement in friendship relationships and high cognitive capabilities were linked to more intact pragmatic capacities. Clinically, emphasizing friendship in early intervention may help elicit more adequate pragmatic capabilities and presumably fuller peer relations in preschoolers with ASD.