Pragmatische taalproblemen bij kinderen met ernstige spraak- en taalmoeilijkheden

The question is whether these pragmatic problems evidently differ from the problems that children with a normal development encounter. Further, is it possible to account for such a pragmatic group distinction on the basis of other competences like structural language problems?
In this framework, data were collected with 29 SLI-children and 33 control- children (aged 4-7), their parents and teachers, with the Nijmegen Test for Pragmatics (NPT), tests for receptive vocabulary and auditive memory, an IQ test (check), and parent/teacher judgments.
The pragmatic skills of the SLI group were significantly lower than those of the control group. We also found a significant relation between the language proficiency tests and the pragmatics scores which indicated that pragmatic disorders are in line with structural language problems. Children with serious structural language problems obviously show more pragmatic problems.
The below average pragmatic level of SLI-children is distressing, as it leads to less interaction and to obstruction of language proficiency development. If structural language problems occur together with language use problems, specific diagnosis and therapy are required. Pragmatic skills testing by clinicians, diagnoticians, and therapists, places the child’s structural language problem in a broader context, highlighting the trouble the child and its direct environment encounter in everyday communication.