Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Social (pragmatic) communication disorder
Summary
Social (pragmatic) communication disorder (SPCD), also known as pragmatic language impairment (PLI), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in the social use of verbal and nonverbal communication. Individuals with SPCD struggle to effectively engage in social interactions, interpret social cues, and use language appropriately in social contexts. This disorder can have a profound impact on an individual's ability to establish and maintain relationships, navigate social situations, and participate in academic and professional settings. Although SPCD shares similarities with other communication disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it is recognized as a distinct diagnostic category with its own set of diagnostic criteria and features.
It has only been since 2013 that SPCD has become its own category in the DSM-5. In creating this new category it allowed individuals to be considered with a form of communication disorder distinct from PLI and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). SPCD lacks behaviors associated with restrictions and repetition which are seen in ASD.
Individuals with social communication disorder have particular trouble understanding the meaning of what others are saying, and they are challenged in using language appropriately to get their needs met and interact with others. Children with the disorder often exhibit:
Delayed language development
Language disorders (similar to the acquired disorder of aphasia) such as word search pauses, jargoning, word order errors, word category errors, verb tense errors.
Stuttering or cluttering speech
Repeating words or phrases
Tendency to be concrete or prefer facts to stories
Difficulties with:
Pronouns or pronoun reversal
Understanding questions
Understanding choices and making decisions
Following conversations or stories (conversations are "off-topic" or "one-sided")
Extracting the key points from a conversation or story; they tend to get lost in the details
Verb tenses
Explaining or describing an event
Understanding satire or jokes and contextual cues
Reading comprehension
Reading body language
Making and maintaining friendships and relationships because of delayed language development
Distinguishing offensive remarks
According to Bishop and Norbury (2002), children with semantic pragmatic disorder can have fluent, complex and clearly articulated expressive language but exhibit problems with the way their language is used.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.