PRAGMATIC ABILITIES OF PUPILS WITH MILD INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

Abstract

Narration has direct influence on social interactions, and it is a good indicator of development of other language abilities and academic achievements. [...]the assessment of storytelling abilities could be useful indicator of pragmatic abilities, of diagnostic process as well as of evaluation of the language intervention efficiency (3). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-V (4), intellectual disabilities are defined as disabilities that emerge during child's development and include deficiencies in the area of intellectual functioning and adaptive behaviour. (15) found that pragmatic impairment affects communication and social interaction, with potential to impact relationships with family members, peers, and other community members. [...]the pragmatic skills of individuals with ID warrant special consideration in research and intervention efforts.\n 5th ed.

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Abstract

The research analyses characteristics of pragmatic abilities of storytelling of pupils with mild intellectual disabilities (MID), in the light of vocabulary characteristics, grammar structure and substantive structure of a story, considering their age and gender. The sample consists of 60 pupils with MID, aged 7 to 9, who attend special school. Child's pragmatic abilities are assessed with The Storytelling Test. The research results reveal considerable progress of the older group in vocabulary, whereas the progress in grammatical and substantive structure was less substantial. When comparing achievements of pupils with MID according to the vocabulary, grammatical and substantive story structure, no gender differences are determined. A comparison of pragmatic abilities of younger and older groups of pupils with MID with the norms for peers with typical development shows minor deviation of the younger group.

The research results reveal characteristics of pragmatic abilities of pupils with MID and can provide insights to speech therapists, teachers, special education teachers and counsellors when considering profiles of individuals that are taken as a basis for designing intervention programs. By implementing such program, we would encourage development of pragmatic abilities of pupils, thus affecting their academic achievements, communication competency and social skills.

Keywords: pragmatic abilities, mild intellectual disabilities, language, speech

Introduction

In the last decades, examination of grammatical abilities has been replaced by examination of pragmatic abilities - often referred to as communication abilities or communication competence (1). To become pragmatically competent, it requires skills and knowledge beyond those entailed in the language acquisition, including memory skills, deep and well-organized knowledge about the social and physical worlds and about the communicative process itself, ability to flexibly integrate multiple sources of information from different modalities, and ability to plan and recognize goal-directed sequences of actions (2).

One of regularly used analytical instruments to assess pragmatic abilities of children is storytelling. Narration has direct influence on social interactions, and it is a good indicator of development of other language abilities and academic achievements. Therefore, the assessment of storytelling abilities could be useful indicator of pragmatic abilities, of diagnostic process as well as of evaluation of the language intervention efficiency (3).

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-V (4), intellectual disabilities are defined as disabilities that emerge during child's development and include deficiencies in the area of intellectual functioning and adaptive behaviour. The latter is collection of conceptual (language abilities, reading, writing, math, reasoning, and memory), social (empathy, social judgment, interpersonal communication abilities, abilities to attain friendships and suchlike), and practical skills (independent action in areas of personal care, employment, financial management, reactions, education and other work tasks) that all people learn in order to function in their daily lives (4).

Since pragmatic competence relies on a complex integration of skills across these domains, pragmatic abilities of people with ID are frequently impacted (5-9). Brojchin et al. (8) state that examination of pragmatic abilities of pupils with mild intellectual disabilities (MID) aged between 8 and 16 shows lower achievements than expected, based on their mental age.

Verbal abilities of children with MID are significantly less developed than non-verbal ones, showing the natural weakness of their speech and language abilities (10). Delay in language development is typical for all children with ID (3). ID impacts the ability to categorize objects, generalization abilities, memory, and development of other abilities that consequently hinder lexical development (11). Despite the delay, the vocabulary of children with MID follows the same developmental path as their peers. Regardless of their chronological age, a child must, in order to progress to the next levels of vocabulary development and other speech structures, master the previous developmental level (11). Smole (10) claims that typical development of morphophonemic rules and elimination of illiteracy stop at the end of the phase of concrete logical operations, representing the end of a critical phase regarding speech development. Most children with MID remain within that frame even according to their chronological age. Consequently, certain levels, especially semantic and grammatical, remain unattainable for some children with ID. Rondal (12) names the most common morph-syntactic issues of persons with ID which stem from weaker abilities of implicit learning, which has great influence on grammatical development. Therefore, children with MID develop their vocabulary better than syntax. They express themselves through coding semantic relations, similar to typically developing children of the same mental age, whereas the meaning of words is more concrete and literal, and the sentences are shorter than those of peers with typical development (10). Children with ID rarely use adjectives and adverbs, and words with more concrete meaning are used more often (13).

Kaat-van den Os el. al. (14) found that children with lower intellectual abilities show significant divergence in vocabulary development patterns. Children with MID represent a heterogeneous group, based on certain areas of speech development, whereas the factors to determine heterogeneity differ (10). Therefore, an accurate clinical assessment of various cognitive, social and language abilities is of utmost importance (15).

When conducting a research on storytelling of children, researchers often study the gender effect. Marjanovic Umek et al. (16) found that girls and boys, aged between 3 and 8, perform comparably in pragmatic language usage, i.e. coherence and cohesion in storytelling in various conditions - picture material, listening of children's books on tape, or in an opening statement, representting introduction into the story.

Persons with MID are included into their environment by inclusive paradigm, wherein lacking language and communication skills hinder their social, emotional and professional adjustment. Developing pragmatic abilities is one of the key factors of successful inclusion of persons with ID, since these abilities are important for a successful academic inclusion, as well as competitive employment and social equality of persons with ID (17).

Martin et. al. (15) found that pragmatic impairment affects communication and social interaction, with potential to impact relationships with family members, peers, and other community members. Thus, the pragmatic skills of individuals with ID warrant special consideration in research and intervention efforts. Better understandding of communication competences of persons with ID is important for assessment and improvement of their pragmatic abilities and consequently to empower persons with ID in achieving their economic and social independence.

Despite the broad application of examining pragmatic abilities of children with typical development in Slovenia, there is a lack of a modern research that would show pragmatic abilities of pupils with MID. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to examine age and gender differences in pragmatic abilities of storytelling of pupils with MID and to explore the characteristics of storytelling that include vocabulary, grammatical speech structure and substantive speech structure. The objective of this research is to provide useful guidance for applying a proper intervention program to guard against the effect of pragmatic impairment on future academic and social abilities. Moreover, achievements of younger and older group of pupils with MID will be compared to the pragmatic abilities of their peers with typical development.

Methods

Research methods

The research is based on the descriptiveanalytical and causal non-experimental method of empirical pedagogic research. The research approach is quantitative.

Sample

60 pupils with MID, aged between 7 and 9 were included in a non-random and purposive sample. All pupils lived in a similar social environment and attended modified educational program with lower educational standards in the northeastern part of Slovenia. Data on IQ (50 -70) were drawn from the participants' personal files. This sample included the same percentage of pupils regarding age and gender, divided in two age groups. The first group includes 30 pupils with MID, aged 7, namely 15 (50%) girls and 15 (50%) boys. The other group included 30 pupils with MID, aged 9, namely 15 (50%) girls and 15 (50%) boys. Children's affirmative agreement to participate in research and permission of their parents were obtained.

Variables

Age and gender represent independent variables. Dependent variable is pragmatic ability of storytelling, which is comprised of vocabulary, grammatical structure, and substantive structure. Vocabulary represents a number of different words, and it includes lexical and grammatical words. Grammatical structure is comprised of sentence length, type 1 and type 2 compound sentences (Slovene and English differ in compound sentence structures, with Slovene having more specific perspectives), and simple sentences. Substantive structure is comprised of event, perspective, and mental state of a protagonist.

Variables evaluation

A child's story was evaluated on an answer sheet and assessed on the basis of indicators that correspond to the variables of this research. The number of elements of each indicator was counted.

Instruments and testing procedures

Child's pragmatic abilities were assessed with The Storytelling Test:Illustrations of the Frog King, which measures three criteria of children's stories: vocabulary, grammatical structure, and content structure of stories (18). The test is in use for assessing pragmatic abilities of storytelling of pupils aged between 6 and 9, according to the norms for children with typical development. Children's stories told through a standard set of illustrations were analyzed in terms of criteria designed to assess the developmental level of the stories. Pearson coefficient of correlation between achievements is 0.99 (95% CI: 0.98 < p < 1.00), interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) is 0.98 (95% CI: 0.97 < ICC < 0.99). Cronbach a for a group of pupils aged 8 is 0.88, and for all age groups (6, 7 and 8) is 0.80. Correlation between joint achievement and criteria with correction for imperfect reliability is 0.81 (without correction the correlation is lower for 0.01), which reflects the validity of the test (18).

The data were processed with the SPSS statistics software. Basic descriptive statistics were used. To determine whether participants' age and gender affected vocabulary, grammatical structure, substantive structure and pragmatic abilities, a two-way analysis of variance was conducted. For the analysis of differences in terms of the sample groups and norms for children with typical development by age regarding the chosen characteristics (vocabulary, grammatical structure, substantive structure, pragmatic abilities), a t-test for independent samples was used. Correlations between dependent variables and pragmatic abilities were tested with Pearson correlation coefficient. Homogeneity of variance was tested with Levene's test. Normality of results distribution was tested with coefficient of asymmetry and coefficient of kurtosis.

Results

Results show that certain variables do not distribute normally, and certain set of variables is differently evaluated, thus it is incomparable. For that reason, all variables have been normalized (Table 1).

General overview of results

The results shown in Table 1 reveal better pragmatic abilities of 9-year-olds (M=3.71) than 7-year-olds (M=2.29). 7-year-olds have the best results in substantive structure (M=2.40), followed by grammatical structure (M=2.38), and vocabulary (M=2.29). 9-year-olds have just the opposite results: they have better results in vocabulary (M=3.72), followed by grammatical structure (M=3.62), and substantive structure (M=3.60).

The mean of different words, used by pupils with MID, is 3 (Table 1). A bigger variety of words was used by 9-year-olds (M=3.72), and a lesser variety by 7-year-olds (M=2.29). The differences in the usage of each part of speech were examined in an in-depth vocabulary analysis. 9-year-olds achieve higher means for all variables of grammatical story structure, and surpass M=3.00; whereas 7-year-olds remain below mean, meaning that 9-year-olds speak in longer and more complex sentences, often compound sentences, which shows the difference between the means of both groups. The biggest difference regarding the age is visible in type 1 compound sentences (M=2.58, M=3.42), followed by type 2 compound sentences (M=2.58, M=3.41), and simple sentences (M=2.60, M=3.40). The smallest difference is found in sentence length (M=2.65, M=3.35). The ratio between simple and compound sentences of 7-year-olds remains the same as of 9-year-olds, whereas the sentences are longer. 9-year-olds have higher means in all variables of substantive story structure; however, they are less homogeneous than 7-year-olds, showing unequal progress of individuals of the older group. 7-year-olds have highest results in mental state of a protagonist (M=2.60), followed by change of perspective (M=2.54), and event (M=2.45). Opposite, 9-year-olds have best results in event (M=3.55), followed by change of perspective (M=3.47), and mental state of a protagonist (M=3.40). The greatest progress in substantive structure of a story can be seen in event (7-year-olds M=2.45; 9-year-olds M=3.55).

Girls and boys have similar results for all areas of pragmatic abilities (Table 2). Girls have slightly higher pragmatic abilities (M=3.04) than boys (M=2.96). Girls have best results in vocabulary (M=3.07), followed by grammatical structure (M=3.03), and substantive structure (M=2.96). Boys have the highest results in substantive structure (M=3.06), followed by grammatical structure (M=2.97), and vocabulary (M=2.93). The biggest difference in gender regarding elements of pragmatic abilities can be seen in substantive structure, with girls having M=2.95, and boys M=3.06. Next is vocabulary (M=3.07 and M=2.93), and the smallest difference is found in grammatical structure (M=3.03 and M=2.97). The results reveal that boys and girls achieve similar results regarding vocabulary. The mean of different words is slightly higher for girls (M=3.07) than for boys (M=2.93). Ratio of type 1 and type 2 compound sentences remains the same regardless of gender, whereas girls speak in longer and more complex sentences; however, the difference is minimal.

Boys have slightly better results in event (M=3.10), and girls have slightly better results in mental state of a protagonist (M=3.12), and change of perspective (M=3.02). Girls have the best results in mental state of a protagonist (M=3.12), and boys in event (M=3.10). The greatest difference in substantive structure of a story regarding gender is in mental state of a protagonist, with girls achieving M=3.12, and boys M=2.88.

There is a statistically significant positive correlation between pragmatic ability of pupils with MID and other dependable variables. The highest correlation is between pragmatic abilities and vocabulary measured by the number of different words, r(60)=0.98, p<0.001, meaning that pragmatic ability becomes higher with broader and richer vocabulary.

Slightly lower, yet still very high positive correlation is seen between pragmatic abilities and grammatical structure, r(60)=0.92, p<0.001. Among grammatical structure variables, the highest correlation with pragmatic abilities is seen in type 2 compound sentences, with high positive correlation r(60)=0.90, p<0.001. This is followed by variables with medium-level correlation, namely type 1 compound sentences, r(60)=0.64, p<0.001, simple sentences, r(60)=0.60, p<0.001, and sentence length, r(60)=0.51, p<0.001.

There is a strong positive correlation between pragmatic ability and substantive structure, r(60)=0.75, p<0.001. Among substantive structure variables, event has the highest correlation with pragmatic abilities, with high positive correlation, r(60)=0.70, p<0.001. Next is change of perspective, r(60)=0.61, p<0.001, and mental state of a protagonist, r(60)=0.42, p<0.001.

The results shown in Table 3reveal statistically significant effects of age on all four dependent variables: vocabulary (F=46.11; p<0.001), grammatical structure (F=36.10; p<0.001), substantive structure (F=37.81; p<0.001) and pragmatic abilities (F=64.39; p<0.001). Unlike age, gender showed no statistically significant differences in any of the four dependent variables: vocabulary (F=0,59; p=0.444), grammatical structure (F=0.10; p=0.76), substantive structure (F=0.05; p=0.83) and pragmatic abilities (F=1.45; p=0.23).

The biggest difference in gender and age interaction (Figure 1) regarding elements of pragmatic abilities can be seen in vocabulary (F=1.15; p=0,29), but however, none of the interactions between age and gender is statistically significant.

A comparison of pragmatic abilities (Table 4 and Table 5) of younger (M=20.30) and older sample group (M=27.70) with the norms for peers with typical development shows minor deviation of the younger group (p<0.001, p<0.05). The same is reflected in vocabulary, grammatical and content structure of the story.

Discussion

The results indicate a statistically significant difference between younger and older group of pupils with MID in their pragmatic abilities, whereas the greatest difference is in vocabulary, lesser in grammatical structure, and the smallest difference is in substantive structure of a story. The differences could be explained by characteristics of the development and by more extensive experiences of the older group.

The results show that vocabulary of 9-year-olds is much richer and of higher quality. In storytelling, they used greater variety of words than 7-year-olds, using especially more lexical words, namely the most of those were verbs, nouns, and adverbs. From grammatical words, adjectives were mostly used. Just the opposite is seen in the usage by 7-year-olds; when storytelling, they used many conjunctions, particles, interjections, and prepositions. In-depth analysis of vocabulary reveals a much broader and richer vocabulary of 9-year-olds, whereas the usage of lexical words is growing, and the words have more concrete meanings and are more often used in everyday communication. Vocabulary development - beside environment factors - is dependent on memory, recall, and child's ability to classify objects in conceptual categories (10), with cognitive development being in charge.

Given the results, pragmatic abilities of pupils can be enhanced by encouraging vocabulary broadening, speaking in compound sentences, and developing event sequences. It is important that school environment and the parents acknowledge child's statements, ask questions, listens to him/her, encourage communication and symbolic play, and expose him/her to children's literature and read out loud (19). Spontaneous playing with peers and various communication settings (home, school) are also of vital importance for language usage in various functions and usage of multiple-words statements (20).

Better results of the older group regarding substantive structure confirm that storytelling becomes more coherent and cohesive in time, which is also linked to mastering grammar and developing meta-language. Sentences are not only longer, but also more complex, since pupils start using conjunctions, prepositions, and auxiliary sentences, and they start changing word order in order to form questions and negative sentences (16). Analysis of substantive structure of the story shows that the number of events, change of perspective, and words to describe mental state of a protagonist grows according to age, which coheres with the results of a typical population - with age there is an important increase in developmental level of describing characteristics of protagonists (18). Along with developmental delay of the theory of mind, which is important for developing coherent narrations (21), pupils with MID often have problems with memory and recall (13), impacting various factors of their narration. When storytelling, one must retain past actions in his/her memory, connect them, and make conclusions to the following events and mental states of protagonists. Based on results of substantive structure of the story, the greatest progress can be expected in the number of events. Baldock (22) found that younger pupils with a typical development often, even in a simple illustrations sequence, do not recognize the main event, thus separately describe illustrations and protagonists, and evolve the story around the main character. Given the results of our research, we are able to confirm the above results for the younger population of pupils with MID.

Results show that the differences between pragmatic abilities of pupils with MID and their typical peers increase with age. Due to delay in cognitive development (10), greater differences between pupils with MID and their typical peers can be expected, especially after the age of 11, when the latter reach the next level of formal operations and are capable of making logical conclusions and of hypothetical and abstract thinking.

The analysis of pragmatic abilities regarding gender showed no statistically significant differences in none of the three partial achievements, which correlates with the results of meta-researches - i.e. that there are more similarities than differences regarding speech of boys and girls (23). Furthermore, the results correlate with the results of The Storytelling Test, conducted by Marjanovic Umek et. al. (18) on peers with typical development.

Conclusion

The analysis of pragmatic abilities of storytelling of 7- and 9-year-olds with MID included characteristics of vocabulary, grammatical, and substantive structure of a story based on age and gender. In interpreting results, fairly large individual differences in speech development must be taken into consideration. Pupils are capable of telling various kinds of stories. Similarly, stories of pupils with the same mutual results can differ regarding certain indicators.

The results show larger statistically significant differences of deviations in vocabulary, grammatical and substantive structure of a story between 9-year-olds with MID and their typical peers, than between 7-year-olds with MID and their typical peers. The conclusion is that the differences between pragmatic abilities of pupils with MID and their typical peers become larger in time, which could be explained by cognitive abilities that hinder the pupils with ID in reaching higher levels of narration competence and by bigger experience of the older group.

The results show that one can influence pragmatic abilities of a child with MID especially by encouraging vocabulary growth, speaking in compound sentences and developing sequences of actions. However, one must realize the restrictions in intellectual potential, visible in low flexibility and thinking dynamics, influencing substantive aspect of a story, or understanding of different perspectives, motives, and emotional states of protagonists.

Speech develops rapidly in early and mid childhood, especially when accompanied by appropriate encouragements; so in a fairly short time important changes regarding child's storytelling could be visible. When reaching low results, it is advisable to reassess the approach after some time. Due to the high importance of an encouraging home environment in developing pragmatic skills, parents need to be encouraged to actively cooperate in intervention programs. The results of this research indicate pragmatic abilities of pupilswith MID, and are useful for speech and language therapists, teachers, special teachers, and counsellors in defining of a profile of pragmatic abilities of pupils, used as a basis for planning interventions. This could be helpful in encouraging development of certain aspects of pragmatic abilities of pupils and consequently having influence on their learning abilities, communication competence, and quality of social interactions.

Limitations of the present study include small and locally focused sample (only pupils with MID form Slovenia), so it might not represent the majority of the pupils with MID and may or may not be generalized to other cultures. Secondly, since the assessment of the pragmatic abilities was conducted by the author herself, it is unavoidable that in this study, certain degree of subjectivity could be found. In addition, the used instrument, which enables the analysis of pragmatic abilities of pupils with MID in a child-friendly way, does not provide the norms for the population of children with MID. Therefore, the only possible comparison was conducted between the results of the sample and the norms set for peers with typical development.

The presented research has answered only a few questions regarding development of pragmatic abilities of pupils with MID. Further research could - by increasing the sample - reach standard norms of pragmatic abilities, distinctive of this age group of pupils with MID. Moreover, it would be advisable to test pragmatic abilities of older pupils with MID and compare the results.

Conflict of interests

Authors declare no conflict of interests.

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Mateja SHILC1

Majda SHMIDT2

Stane KOSHIR3

1Elementary school Gustava Shiliha, Maribor, Slovenia

2Faculty of Education UM, Maribor, Slovenia

3Faculty of Education UL, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Recived: 16.01.2017

Accepted: 19.02.2017

Original article

Corresponding address:

Mateja SHILC

Cesta Proletarskih brigad 64, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

Phone: [phone]

E-mail: [email protected]