Children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and pragmatic language impairment: Differences and similarities in pragmatic ability

Narrative ability in children with cerebral palsy

“…However, the children in the studies by Miniscalco et al (2007) and Manhardt and Rescorla (2002) presented problems with narrative ability even in the presence of adequate verbal comprehension. This was also the case in an earlier study by Holck, Nettelbladt and Dahlgren Sandberg (2009) concerning children with cerebral palsy (CP), spina bifida with hydrocephalus (SBH) and PLI. However, the relationship disappeared when mental age was accounted for.…”

“…Dennis et al (1994) concluded that the problems with narratives should be seen as pragmatic deficits deriving from core problems in language processing. In the study of Holck et al (2009) the performance of the children with CP was similar to the performance of the children with SBH, thus indicating a possible similarity between the groups concerning narrative ability.…”

“…This study took its point of departure from a finding in a previous study, namely that children with CP showed problems with narration, manifested as a result of almost two standard deviations below the norms of the BST Information (Holck et al, 2009). Interestingly, these findings are not supported in previous research on SLI and PLI (Botting, 2002;Norbury & Bishop, 2003).…”

“…In a recent study by Holck et al (2009) it was found that children with CP experienced some difficulties with inferencing, although they performed better on inferential than on literal questions. The same group of children was found to have considerable difficulties with narratives, performing several standard deviations below the criteria for different tasks.…”

Inferential ability in children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and pragmatic language impairment

“…In a recent study by Holck, Nettelbladt and Dahlgren Sandberg (2009), two groups of children with early-onset physical impairments, namely children with cerebral palsy (CP) and children with spina bifida with hydrocephalus (SBH), were compared to a third group without established brain damage but with primary pragmatic problems. CP and SBH are both reported to be associated with problems related to communication and pragmatic ability, and thus it was considered to be of interest to compare the three groups.…”