La lucha por una universidad democrática y el odio a la policía

Table 1.5 Summary of the literature reviewed for idiom comprehension in children with communication impairments (CwCI)

Researcher and date Idiom comprehension in CwCI - key findings

with PLI had more difficulty than TD children.

Vance and Wells (1994) LI group performed the same as

language-matched controls on idiom and metaphor comprehension.

Rinaldi (2000) 11-14 year old children with LI

performed worse than language-matched children on ambiguous language

comprehension (including idioms). Dennis et al (2001) 8 children with HFA failed to understand

metaphor and speech acts on the Test of Language Competence.

Whyte et al (2014) 5-12 year-old children with ASD performed as well as syntax-matched controls on an idiom definition task. Advanced TOM ability was related to idiom comprehension in the children with ASD only.

Qualls et al (2004) 13-15 year-olds with LI performed significantly worse than TD peers on an idiom comprehension task.

Lee et al (2015) 6-11 year-old Korean children with HFA and ADHD performed significantly worse than TD controls on idiom comprehension.

Cain et al (2009) highlight that comprehension of figurative language, such as idioms, causes particular difficulties for children with language impairments. Kerbel and Grunwell (1998, in Norbury, 2004) tested idiom comprehension in children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) using a definition task and a prop-based ‘acting out the idiom’ task (to limit the need for expressive language).

The children with PLI demonstrated difficulties compared to the controls in the latter but not the former task. Unfortunately, the language levels of the children in both groups were not given and the PLI group also included some children on the autism spectrum and it is well-documented that these children have difficulty with pretend play, which could account for the difference.

Vance and Wells (1994 in Norbury, 2004) found no deficit in idiom and metaphor comprehension in children with language impairment when they were compared to younger language-aged matched controls. This finding suggests that idiom

comprehension develops in line with general verbal language skills. A criticism of this study is that the response mode was the choice of one out of three pictures, one of which was a depiction of the literal meaning of the idiom, making it an easier task as process of elimination could be employed.

Rinaldi (2000), on the other hand, reported that 11-14 year-old children with

language impairments were impaired on ambiguous language comprehension (which included idioms) compared to language-matched controls. A criticism of this study is that Rinaldi used a complex response mode which also included pictures of the literal foils.

Idiom comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Even though clinicians and researchers often report huge difficulties with non-literal language comprehension in children with ASD, there are actually very few studies that investigate this. Specific difficulties with theory of mind have been extensively identified however, and these contribute to the difficulties understanding implied meaning, idioms, metaphors, irony, lies, jokes, deception and faux pas (Dennis et al, 2001). Whyte et al (2014) outline the two competing explanatory theories for the difficulties understanding figurative language in ASD. One is relevance theory. Happe (1993) proposes that an understanding of speakers’ intentions (a key feature of relevance theory) is crucial for understanding figurative language whereas other researchers such as Gernsbacher and Pripas-Kapit (2012) and Norbury (2004) propose that basic language abilities, in particular understanding vocabulary and syntax are the most important prerequisites for idiom comprehension. Gernsbacher and Pripas-Kapit (2012) stated that if children with ASD “don’t have difficulty comprehending language in general, they don’t have difficulty comprehending

metaphoric language in particular” (p94). They also pointed out that receptive vocabulary was a poor matching variable to control for structural language abilities. In her advanced theory of mind study, Happe (1994)found that individuals with ASD scored the same as typically developing controls on two stories that contained idioms. She interpreted this as meaning that theory of mind was not necessary to understand idioms as they could be learned as ‘frozen expressions’. However, this does not explain how the idioms are initially acquired.

Dennis et al (2001) used the Figurative Language Sub-Test of the Test of Language Competence (Wiig and Secord, 1989) to assess 8 children with high functioning autism (HFA). The results indicated that these children could define words and identify multiple meanings for ambiguous words. However, they failed to understand metaphor and to produce speech acts, both of which are inferences that are crucial for successful social communication because they elaborate meaning or convey intentions. The results also highlighted that it is understanding the speaker’s intentionality in social contexts that is most impaired in children with HFA.

Criticisms of this study, as summarised by Norbury (2004), are that the verbal IQ of the children ranged hugely (from 71 to 146) and there was a lot of within-group variation on the sub-test scores. Consequently it is not clear from this study if idiom comprehension is linked to general language ability or not.

Whyte et al (2014)carried out a study looking at the links between idiom

comprehension, theory of mind and syntactic skills in 26 children with ASD (aged 5- 12) and 2 control groups: 1 consisting of 26 chronological age- and nonverbal IQ- matched children and the other consisting of 26 syntax-level matched children. The children were asked to verbally define the meaning of 20 verbally-presented idioms in the context of a short supporting paragraph. Syntactic ability was measured with the Syntax Construction sub-test of the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999) which is a test of expressive syntax. Advanced theory of mind ability was assessed with six of Happe’s mentalising Strange Stories (O'Hare et al, 2009) and the children’s version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RMTE) task (Baron-Cohen et al, 2001). The Strange Stories task requires the interpretation of the intentions and mental states of characters in short stories and involves the recognition of lies, persuasion, forgetting, etc. The RMTE requires the children to match complex mental state words (jealous) or short phrases (thinking

about something) to photos of facial expressions from the eye region of different faces. Both tests are appropriate for children aged 5-12 years. The results

demonstrated that the children with ASD performed worse than the age-matched controls but as well as the syntax-matched controls on the idiom comprehension task. This is a surprising finding given that children with ASD usually have a strength in the area of expressive syntax. In addition, advanced theory of mind abilities were related to understanding of idioms in children with ASD but not the typically developing children.

Studies of children with mixed communication impairments

Qualls et al (2004) compared the understanding of idioms in 27 eighth grade children (13-14 year-olds) with language-based learning disabilities (LBLD) to that of 22 typically developing peers (mean age 13.8). The results demonstrated that the children with LBLD performed significantly worse than the typically developing control children. Reading ability was associated with comprehension of the low familiarity idioms but only when they were presented in a story context.

Norbury (2004) explored the understanding of idioms in isolation and in context in 93 children with communication impairments and 39 age-matched peers. Due to the overlap between the diagnostic sub-groups of SLI, PLI, ASD and Asperger’s

syndrome she grouped the children by language ability. The 4 clinical experimental groups were: 29 children with language impairment (LI), 6 children with pragmatic impairment (PI), 29 children with ASD plus LI (ASL) and 29 children with ASD only (ASO). Norbury hypothesises that the theory of mind and central coherence impairments in children with ASD should make it more difficult for them to do well on idiom comprehension tasks that require the processing of context to infer

figurative meaning. The results demonstrated that all of the children in the study understood idioms in context better than in isolation. However, the LI and ASL groups did not benefit from context as much as the other groups. This indicates that language ability was a bigger predictor of performance with idioms in context than pure ASD. Age and working memory were other significant predictors. Norbury (2004) only used 10 idioms in this study, 5 transparent and 5 opaque. She

deliberately selected low familiarity idioms to test the use of context to understand them. Her scoring system of using a 3 point scale ranging from 0 (don’t know or literal answer) to 2 (correct) is open to interpretation. She only gives one example of

what a score of 1 would entail for 1 idiom (burning the candle at both ends – ‘he’s tired’).

Lee et al (2015) found that 6-11 year-old Korean children with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder and children with ADHD both performed significantly worse than typically developing children on their Korean idiom comprehension test.

1.4.3 Critical evaluation of the above studies

The above studies present conflicting findings. One reason for this is that it is very difficult to control for all variables in studies of idiom comprehension. These variables include:

 different sub-groups of communication impairment in the participants  varying numbers of participants

 different cognitive and linguistic levels of the participants  the methodology used

 the familiarity and transparency of idioms  the use of context or not

 the mode of response employed

These confounding variables make it very difficult to identify the specific cause of any idiom comprehension difficulties.

Findings from studies on the relationship between theory of mind and figurative language (Happe 1993, Caillies and Le Sourn-Bissaoui, 2008) have been

contradicted by findings on the link between general language skills and figurative language (Norbury, 2004, Gernsbacher and Pripas-Kapit, 2012). One flaw in the former theory is that complex Theory of Mind (TOM) is strongly dependent on well- developed verbal language skills and many TOM studies have not matched children according to language level.

The next section examines the inferential and idiom comprehension abilities of children with other types of disorders. It will give further support to the above findings from children with primary communication disorders.

1.4.4 Other disorders: Inferential and Idiom comprehension difficulties