Pragmatics

Question 1

Pragmatic Domains (4)

Answer 1

• Communicative functions
• Discourse Management
• Register variation
• Presupposition

Question 2

Areas of communicative functions (7)

Answer 2

1. Instrumental- child is saying something to satisfy his or her need in their own need.
2. Regulatory- trying to control the behavior of other people
3. Interactional- participating in a social interaction
4. Personal- express opinions or feelings
5. Imaginative- engaging in fantasy
6. Heuristic- to seek information
7. Informative- to provide information

Question 3

Discourse Management

Answer 3

• Discourse management- person’s ability to take turns, stay on topic, maintain eye contact and respond to people’s communication and nonverbal communication
• Also enables individual to repair their comment

Question 4

Register Variation

Answer 4

Register variation- ability to change speech in a specific environment (ASD and kids with attention issues).

Question 5

Presupposition

Answer 5

Presupposition- implicit assumption about background knowledge relating to an utterance. Enables speaker to provide the correct amount of information. Often equivalent to TOM

Question 6

Development of Pragmatic Skills in Typical School Age Child 1

Answer 6

• Increased range of COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTION (narration, persuasion, & negotiation)
• Increased decontextualized comments
• School-age child has more ability for Discourse Management and requires decreased support, also takes longer turns, more turns, has improved topic maintenance, and less unrelated comments.
• Cohesiveness as exemplified by smooth transitions and less abrupt shifts in communication

Question 7

Development of Pragmatic Skills in Typical School Age Child 2

Answer 7

• School-age child has register variation as exemplified by new polite forms such as requests for permission, use of permission directives, and some indirect requests.
• Discovers the power of language and social negotiation (figure out how communication can get them certain things)
• Presupposition as exemplified by the school-age child attending to the listener needs and acting as a source of information

Question 8

Pragmatic Development in typical older child/adolescent (3 things involved)

Answer 8

• Discourse Genres
• Register Variation
• Presupposition

Question 9

Discourse Management for adolescence (5)

Answer 9

• Longer topic maintenance
• Dialogue is extended
• Makes contributions to the topic with greater number of appropriate, new, and relevant points
• Topic shifting becomes smoother
• Adjusts content/style in relation to the thoughts and feelings of the listener

Question 10

Persuasion - Adolescence

Answer 10

• Is aware of the characteristics of the listener and adjusts to his/her social status, degree of familiarity, level of maturity, etc.
• Can state the reasons why it would be advantageous for him/her to comply
• Anticipates counterarguments
• Replies to counterarguments
• Politeness and bargaining are used as positive strategies
• Whining, fit throwing, and begging are perceived as negative and useless strategies
• Can generate multiple arguments
• Asserts himself/herself during discourse

Question 11

Negotiation- Adolescence

Answer 11

• Is able to take the social perspective of another person
• Exhibits awareness of the needs, thoughts, and feelings of other people
• Uses verbal reasoning
• Cooperative and collaborative strategies exercised
• Exhibits concern for group welfare
• Exhibits concern for long-term implications of conflict
• Is willing to compromise

Question 12

Impaired Pragmatic Skills – Spectrum Disorders(other kids too) (6)

Answer 12

• Reduced topic management skills
• Reduced presupposition skills
• Obsessive interests
• Limited conversation or excessive
  conversation about specific interests
• Prosodic deficits
• Gaze deficits

Question 13

The Social Skills Umbrella

Answer 13

• Pragmatics
• — Conversational skills
• Paralinguistics
• — Proximity

—- Prosody

—- Gestures

—- Eye Gaze

• Social Behaviors include conventional gestures, facial expressions, and the avoidance of inappropriate actions

Question 14

SLP and Pragmatic Intervention

Answer 14

• Pragmatic communication is within the SLP’s domain
• Improving conversational skills is within the scope of practice of SLP’s
• These two factors make the role of SLP’s unique in the management of pragmatic communicative disorders

Question 15

Specifics and Intervention (5)

Answer 15

• Increasing overall rate communication as appropriate
• Encouraging a range of communicative functions
• Teaching turn taking and topic maintenance in conversation
• Increasing flexibility of forms used to convey various functions
• Teaching the child to “read” what other people may be thinking and to modify his/her language as needed (most difficult piece)

Question 16

EBP – Social Skills and the School-Age child

10

Answer 16

• Scripting & fading
• Peer & target training
• Incidental teaching
• Direct instruction
• Social stories and Comic strip conversations (Gray, 2000)
• Games based on special interests
• Cognitive Behavioral Approaches
• Social Skills Groups
• Peer Support Networks
• Video modeling

Question 17

Scripting Social Skills

Answer 17

• The child is provided with an explicit written script of an interaction
• Walk up to a person in your class
• Make eye contact
• Say Hi
• Child and SLP practice the script
• Child practices the script with a peer
• Script is gradually faded – remove increasingly larger parts of the script until the child can do the scene independently

Question 18

Creating scripts with the child

Answer 18

• The child is given a list of topics and encouraged to write and fade scripts based on each
• The child is encouraged to bridge to new topics by beginning with favored topics
• – baseball>baseball stadium>food sold in concessions
• Encourage the child to choose a script to talk with a teacher, caregiver, or slp
• Encourage the child to fade the scripts with the adult
• Encourage the child to repeat the process with a peer partner

Question 19

Scripting/Peer Training (5)

Answer 19

• Peers receive training without the child present
• Peers are instructed to facilitate the child’s skills by:
• — Looking, waiting, and listening

—- Answering questions

—- Initiate talking

—- Say something friendly, nice, polite

—- Continue talking (within reason)

Question 20

Incidental Teaching

Answer 20

• Materials are controlled so that child must interact to obtain the desired objects and/or to participate In desired activity
• Interactions are structured:

—- ex. Child is assigned to place stickers of food on a page of farm animals (to feed the animals)

• If peer involved then he/she holds the sheet of stickers and is instructed to keep all the stickers ntil asked by the child
• Child must ask for each sticker to complete the picture

Question 21

Direct Instruction

1. Conversation

Answer 21

• Walk up to person
• Say “Hi”
• Smile
• Listen to other person says
• Respond

Question 22

Direct Instruction

1. Topic Maintenance

Answer 22

• Listen
• Think about what the person says
• Talk about the same thing

Question 23

Direct Instruction cont.

1.Change topic

Answer 23

• Remain quiet / listen
• Wait for person to pause
• Say “let’s talk about something different…how about…”

Question 24

Social Stories (5)

• Types of sentences

Answer 24

Carol Gray, 2000 has a copyright on the term “social stories”

1. Descriptive sentences – statements of fact
2. Perspective sentences- internal states
3. Affirmative sentences- common values
4. Control sentences- identify personal strategies
5. Cooperative sentences- what others can do to help

Question 25

Special Interests/Games

Answer 25

- Social games may be created based on the interests of the child - Child should be involved in creating materials and rules ( works on pragmatic skills, turn taking, topic maintenance, all about the interaction) - Child teaches peers how to play - Special opportunities to play the game are provided - Encourage child and peer to take turns choosing games to play

Question 26

Cognitive Skills Training

Answer 26

- Role play/social scripts in a peer group - Observe and guide the role play to determine what the child knows and how he perceives the situation from the point of the view of the other person - Ask questions to reinforce understanding

Question 27

Example – Cognitive Skills ?’s (8)

Answer 27

- Did I pay attention to the story? - Did I pay attention to what others saw and heard? - Do I know what I need to do? - What do I think happened? - How do I know this? - What do other people think happened? - Teach them to ask themselves - Can use PECS symbols with text to help remember these sentences

Question 28

Social Thinking

Answer 28

“Social thinking is what we do when we interact with people: we think about them. And how we think about people affects how we behave, which in turn affects how others respond to us, which in turn affects our own emotions.”

Question 29

Social Skills Groups

Answer 29

- Commercial Curricula Ex. Navigating the Social World (McAfee, 2001) - Skillstreaming the Adolescent (Goldstein & McGinnis, 2000) - Encourage and provide consistent group structure - Social skills groups are most effective when provided in school settings and when target is social-cognitive skills Teaches kids how to function in group settings, in a way that is socially acceptable

Question 30

Peer Support Networks

Answer 30

- 2-5 peers are selected - Peer is assigned a 20 minute time period each day to structure activities for child - Kids on the higher end of the spectrum like to work with adults, so this is less pressure and intimidating

Question 31

Video Modeling

Answer 31

- Peers are taped interacting in a variety of social situations - Clips from tv and movies may be used to exhibit both positive and negative interactions - Written scripts are provided and rehearsed - Focus on one cue at a time --- Tone of voice --- Facial expression --- Proximity --- Loudness --- Verbal content - Non-threatening - Should be peers that they will pay more attention to

Question 32

Video Modeling continued

Answer 32

- View and discuss reactions seen on the video - View and target/attend to each cue/remark on observations - Re-enact the video with SLPRe-enact the video with a peer - Describe the experience and the video verbally - Improvise a similar situation