Testing Pragmatic Language Disorders: a culturally-sensitive assessment

Recent years have seen a growing in interest in the application of pragmatic aspects of communication in the area of language disorders. This has led to the development of a range of different methods of screening to investigate the subject’s ability to understand and produce different types of communicative acts, in order to assess the disordered language of both children and adults. Yet, pragmatic language disorders (PLDs) remain difficult to diagnose, though an early diagnosis in children can quickly ensure the identification of language problems that could severely interfere with learning. Tests are generally designed to assess six core subcomponents of pragmatic language: physical setting, audience, topic, purpose (speech acts), visual-gestural cues, and abstraction. Since the major deficits in pragmatic communication refer to qualitative impairments in social interaction and communication, standardized measures may not be appropriate to the all racial and ethnic populations. Hence, the impact of culture/s with respect to how the diagnosis of this language disorder is made cannot be ignored: the kinds of behaviors thought to be the very deficits that define the disorder may in fact vary from culture to culture. Applying the same criteria to every child is not only a culturally insensitive choice, but could also result in serious misclassification of symptoms, since the way in which a child does or does not respond in specific social situations may very well be mediated by cultural factors. Actually, the dearth of information on cultural differences in the diagnosis and the perception of these language disorders (whatever their etiology) does not allow an easy assessment of symptoms for children of different cultures. In a broad critical discourse analysis perspective, our study aims at investigating a selection of widely used different screening measures in Italy and English-speaking countries, and at evaluating how cross-cultural differences may impact on perceptions of PLDs. Key words: pragmatic language disorders (PLDs), pragmatic language testing, culturally-sensitive screening measures Provisional References Daley, T. (2002). The need for cross-cultural research on the pervasive developmental disorders. Transcultural Psychiatry, 39(4), 531-550. Danseco, E. R. (1997). Parental beliefs on childhood disability: Insights on culture, child development and intervention. International Journal of Disability and Development, 44, 41-52. Directory of Speech-Language Pathology Assessment Instruments Introduction. http://www.asha.org/SLP/assessment/Assessment- Introduction/ Hoffmann et al. (2013) Pragmatic Language Assessment in Williams Syndrome. American Journal of Speech- Language Pathology, 22, 198-204. Lau, A. S., Garland, A. F., Yeh, M., McCabe, K. M., Wood, P. A., & Hough, R. L. (2004). Race/ethnicity and interinformant agreement in assessing adolescent psychopathology. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 12(3), 145-156. Mandell, D. S., Listerud, J., Levy, S. E., & Pinto-Martin, J. A. (2002). Race differences in the age at diagnosis among medicaid-eligible children with autism. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 41(12), 1447-1453. Mio, J. S., Barker-Hackett, L., & Tumambing. J. (2006). What is multicultural psychology? In Multicultural psychology: Understanding our diverse communities (pp. 1-32). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Rutter, M. L., Kreppner, J. M., & O’Conner, T. G. (2001). Specificity and heterogeneity in children’s responses to profound institutional privation. British Journal of Psychiatry, 179, 97-103.