Oral discourse after early-onset hydrocephalus: linguistic ambiguity, figurative language, speech acts, and script-based inferences.
Studied 101 children, ages 6 to 15 years (50 with early-onset hydrocephalus, 51 normally developing), on four oral discourse tasks: establishing alternate meanings for ambiguous sentences; understanding figurative expressions; making bridging inferences; and producing speech acts. Children with hydrocephalus performed more poorly than controls on all four discourse tasks; and a higher-IQ hydrocephalus subgroup performed more poorly than controls on all but the figurative expressions task. The fluent, grammatically framed, but content-impoverished language described in early-onset hydrocephalus appears to reflect not so much problems in deriving word- and sentence-based meaning as deficits in the pragmatic use and understanding of language in discourse.
Dennis
M
M
Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Barnes
M A
MA
D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D006849:Hydrocephalus / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior