Pragmatic Skills in School-Age Children With Primary Language Impairment and Language-Learning Disabilities

Abstract

We conducted a scoping review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses to map the available research describing verbal pragmatic skills development and problems in school-age children with primary language impairments and children with language-learning disabilities. A total of 112 reports met inclusion criteria for our review. Many studies were published in journals focused on communication disorders between the years 2000 and 2019 and targeted K-12 children in the United States or the United Kingdom with developmental language disorder who were most often compared with age-matched typically developing peers using a group comparison research design. Over 60% of the studies had fewer than 25 participants in the target group. Nearly two thirds of study participants were boys, and most were Caucasian from middle- to upper-income families. The majority of studies used multiple outcome measures in data analyses, most often norm-referenced and researcher-designed tests, language sample analysis, and rating scales. A third of studies omitted information about outcome measure reliability and nearly all studies omitted validity data. Several studies are described in detail as examples and a summary of the major findings from the reviewed studies is presented.