Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder: Research prospects and clinical practice
Giovanni Valeri
For decades clinicians have described children who present an atypical development of social-communication and pragmatic skills as a salient clinical feature, nevertheless the best nosographic conceptualization of these difficulties still remains controversial. This debate has become even more significant with the introduction of a new disorder to the DSM-5 (APA, 2013), as part of Communication Disorders, within the larger domain of Neurodevelopment Disorders: Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder (SPCD), and the proposed introduction of Pragmatic Language Impairment (PLI) to the ICD-11. The debate is made particularly complicated by the complexity and ambiguity of the definition of Pragmatics, the inconsistency in terminology and diagnostic criteria, the scarcity of reliable assessment tools and culturally valid normative data, as well as the limited comparison of pragmatic competence/social-communication profiles in several neurodevelopmental disorders (Norbury, 2014; Valeri, 2014a). In the article we present some assessment tools available in Italian and some proposals for therapeutic intervention.
Keywords
Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder, Communication Disorders, Assessment, Therapeutic intervention.