Cover not available

In:Atypical Language Development in Romance Languages
Edited by Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla, Lucía Buil-Legaz, Raúl López-Penadés, Victor A. Sanchez-Azanza and Daniel Adrover-Roig
[Not in series 223] 2019
► pp. 113–126

Get fulltext
PDF logo with download linkDownload Chapter PDF

Idiom understanding competence of Spanish children with Specific Language Impairment and Pragmatic Language Impairment

 | Universitat Jaume I
 | Universitat Jaume I
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 11 June 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.223.07and
Children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) have problems understanding idioms. However, whether similar difficulties are present in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and which cognitive and linguistic factors are implied, is still not fully addressed. In this chapter the competence to understand idioms in Spanish children with SLI and PLI is compared to a typically developing group, using a verbal and a visual condition. Visual idioms challenged both children with SLI and PLI, but verbal indioms only challenged children with PLI. Also, their performance was related to their grammar and pragmatics skills, but not to the vocabulary ones. However, only children with PLI improved their competence on the visual condition. Practical implications for diagnosing and designing interventions are discussed.
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Figurative language and idiom understanding
    • Idiom understanding in children with SLI and PLI
    • Aims and hypothesis
  • Methodology
    • Participants
  • Materials
    • Language measures
    • Idiom understanding tasks
      • a.Verbal condition
    • Visual condition
    • Procedure
  • Results
    • I. Between-group comparisons on key and related measures
    • II. Within-group comparisons between verbal and visual conditions
    • III. Correlations between idiom understanding (verbal condition) and language measures
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (23)
References
Ackerman, B. P. 1982. On comprehending idioms: Do children get the picture? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 33, 439–454. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM- 5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Andrés-Roqueta, C., & Katsos, N. 2017. The contribution of grammar, vocabulary and Theory of Mind in pragmatic language competence in children with autistic spectrum disorders. Frontiers in Psychology 8, 996. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M. 2004. Diagnostic dilemmas in specific language impairment. In L. Verhoeven & J. van Balkom (Eds.), Classification of developmental language disorders (pp. 309–326). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., & Adams, C. 1989. Conversational characteristics of children with semantic-pragmatic disorder, II: What features lead to a judgement of inappropriacy? British Journal of Disorders of Communication 24 (3): 241–263. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., & Norbury, C. F. 2002. Exploring the borderlands of autistic disorder and specific language impairment: A study using standardised diagnostic instruments. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 43(7), 917–929. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., & Rosenbloom, L. 1987. Childhood language disorders: Classification and overview. In W. Yule & M. Rutter (Eds.), Language development and disorders. London: MacKeith Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N., & Knox, E. 2001. Follow-up of children attending infant language units: outcomes at 11 years of age. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 36(2), 207–219. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gernsbacher, M. A., & Robertson, R. R. W. 1999. The role of suppression in figurative language comprehension. Journal of Pragmatics 31, 1616–1630. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glucksberg, S. 2006. Beyond literal meanings: The psychology of allusion. Psychological Science 2(3), 146–152. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kerbel, D., & Grunwell, P. 1998a. A study of idiom comprehension in children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties, Part I: Task effects on the assessment of idiom comprehension in children. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 33, 1–22. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1998b. A study of idiom comprehension in children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties, Part II: Between-groups results and discussion. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 33, 23–44. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levorato, M. C., Nesi, B., & Cacciari, C. 2004. Reading comprehension and understanding idiomatic expressions: A developmental study. Brain and Language 9, 303–314. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mendoza, E., Carballo, G., Muñoz, J., & Fresneda, M. D. 2005. Test de comprensión de estructuras gramaticales (CEG). Madrid: TEA Ediciones.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nippold, M. A., & Duthie, J. K. 2003. Mental imagery and idiom comprehension: A comparison of school-age children and adults. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46, 788–799. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norbury, C. F. 2004. Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, 1179–1193. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pouscoulous, N. 2014. The elevator’s buttocks. Metaphorical abilities in children. In D. Matthews (Ed.), Pragmatic development in first language acquisition (pp. 239–259). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raven, J., Raven, J. C., & Court, J. H. 1998. Coloured progressive matrices. Oxford: Oxford Psychologists Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rinaldi, W. 2000. Pragmatic comprehension in secondary school-aged students with specific developmental language disorder. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 35, 1–29. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saborit, C., & Julián, J. P. 2005. L’avaluació del llenguatge infantil. ELI. Universitat Jaume I de Castelló (UJI). Col·lecció: Educació.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Titone, D. A., & Connine, C. M. 1994. Descriptive norms for 171 idiomatic expressions: Familiarity, compositionality, predictability, and literality. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 9, 247–270. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vance, M., & Wells, B. 1994. The wrong end of the stick: Language-impaired children’s understanding of nonliteral language. Child Language Teaching and Therapy 10, 23–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winner, E., & Leekman, S. 1991. Distinguishing irony from deception: Understanding the speaker’s second-order intention. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 9, 257–270. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Andrés-Roqueta, Clara, Raquel Flores-Buils & Alfonso Igualada
2024. Validation of PleaseApp: a digital tool for the assessment of receptive pragmatic abilities in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Frontiers in Psychiatry 15 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue