Psicothema was founded in Asturias (northern Spain) in 1989, and is published jointly by the Psychology Faculty of the University of Oviedo and the Psychological Association of the Principality of Asturias (Colegio Oficial de Psicología del Principado de Asturias).
We currently publish four issues per year, which accounts for some 100 articles annually. We admit work from both the basic and applied research fields, and from all areas of Psychology, all manuscripts being anonymously reviewed prior to publication.
Psicothema, 2010. Vol. Vol. 22 (nº 4). 677-683
Clara Andrés Roqueta y Rosa Ana Clemente Estevan
Universitat Jaume I
Gran número de sujetos con Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje (TEL) manifiestan problemas comunicativos y de tipo pragmático. Este estudio se planteó analizar el papel de las tareas de comprensión mentalista en la distinción de un perfil TEL con problemas predominantemente pragmáticos. Para ello se comparó la ejecución en tareas mentalistas de un grupo de participantes con TEL convencional (n= 11), un grupo con TEL con mayor afectación pragmática (n= 9) y un grupo con desarrollo típico del lenguaje (n= 13) de edades comprendidas entre 4 y 7 años. Los resultados revelaron que todos los grupos fueron igualmente capaces de atribuir estados mentales cuando el contexto está estructurado. Sin embargo, los sujetos con TEL pragmático tuvieron menos éxito que el grupo TEL convencional cuando las tareas estaban orientadas de manera comunicativa y necesitaban procesar información no explícita del contexto. Nuestros datos apoyan la posibilidad de aislar un subtipo de TEL con especiales problemas pragmáticos, así como el uso de tareas mentalistas para evaluar de forma más precisa estas dificultades.
Pragmatic difficulties in children with specific language impairment. The role of mentalistic tasks. Several subjects with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) show communicative and pragmatic problems. In this study, we suggested that mentalistic comprehension tasks would help us to find a deteriorated pragmatic profile among the population with SLI. To achieve this goal, a group of participants with conventional SLI (n= 11) was compared to a group of SLI with more pragmatic problems (n= 9) and their respective control group with typically developed language (n= 13), of ages between 4 and 7 years. Results revealed that all the groups were able to attribute mental states in tasks where the context was structured. However, the subjects with predominant pragmatic SLI showed poorer performance than those with conventional SLI when tasks were communicative-oriented and they needed to process non-explicit information from the context. These findings suggest that it is possible to isolate a SLI subtype with more pragmatic problems and also that we can use mentalistic tasks to assess these difficulties more accurately.
SPANISH
ENGLISH