Communication in Multiple Sclerosis: Pragmatic Deficit and its Relation with Cognition and Social Cognition

Abstract

Overall, the study shows a diffuse pragmatic impairment in multiple sclerosis, not associated with the patient's global neuropsychological profile. By contrast, our findings suggest a close relation between pragmatics and specific cognitive aspects such as executive functions, and between pragmatics and social cognition. This study underlines the need of looking beyond classical cognitive performance, to consider underestimated communicative disturbances of high clinical relevance.

Pragmatic competence and its relationship with the linguistic and cognitive profile of young adults with dyslexia

“…A possible explanation for this discrepancy might be that the link between pragmatics and Theory of Mind is stronger in development, whereas in adulthood, the two domains are to some extent independent from one another. Our findings also point to a pattern that differs from adult clinical populations, such as for instance multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, and schizophrenia, where the relationship between deficits in pragmatics, Theory of Mind, and executive functions is much stronger (Bambini, Arcara, Martinelli, et al, 2016;Bosco et al, 2017;Carotenuto et al, 2018;Parola, Berardinelli, & Bosco, 2018). This might be due to specific aspects differentiating dyslexia from schizophrenia and other clinical populations, as well as to differences in age and education, because our sample included university students.…”

“…Moreover, with regard to Theory of Mind, future studies should further explore its relation to pragmatics in dyslexia by using other tests, as only one (SET) was used here, which-although it proved to be related to pragmatic skills (Carotenuto et al, 2018)-is less known in the literature compared with tests such as False Belief or Strange Stories.…”

“…This is a recently developed and standardized battery for assessing pragmatics in adult Italian-speaking populations , already used with neurological (Bambini, Arcara, Martinelli, et al, 2016;Carotenuto et al, 2018) and psychiatric patients (Bambini, Arcara, Bechi, et al, 2016). This is a recently developed and standardized battery for assessing pragmatics in adult Italian-speaking populations , already used with neurological (Bambini, Arcara, Martinelli, et al, 2016;Carotenuto et al, 2018) and psychiatric patients (Bambini, Arcara, Bechi, et al, 2016).…”

“…For pragmatics, we used the APACS. This is a recently developed and standardized battery for assessing pragmatics in adult Italian-speaking populations , already used with neurological (Bambini, Arcara, Martinelli, et al, 2016;Carotenuto et al, 2018) and psychiatric patients (Bambini, Arcara, Bechi, et al, 2016). APACS includes a production section, with a semistructured interview about autobiographical topics (Interview) and a photograph description task (Description), as well as a comprehension section, encompassing a task in which participants are asked to answer questions about narrative texts (Narratives), two multiple choice tasks assessing the ability to infer nonliteral meanings (Figurative Language 1) and verbal humour (Humour), and a task assessing the ability to understand nonliteral meanings through verbal explanation of familiar idioms, novel metaphors, and common proverbs (Figurative Language 2).…”

“…et al's (2015) Story-based Empathy Task (SET), measuring attribution of intentions and emotional states through cartoons, already used in conjunction with APACS(Carotenuto et al, 2018).…”