A preliminary epidemiologic study of social (pragmatic) communication disorder in the context of developmental language disorder.
Susan Ellis Weismer, J Bruce Tomblin, Maureen S Durkin and 2 others
PMID 34383380WHAT IT FOUND
About 30% of adolescents with a history of developmental language disorder showed social communication deficits.
Roughly 9% of those without prior language issues also met criteria. Clinicians should screen for pragmatic problems in all children, not just those with known language delays.
Key findings
01Concomitant SCD was estimated to occur in 30% of children with a history of DLD and 9% of children without DLD history.
02Kindergarten language diagnosis was the only significant predictor for Concomitant SCD, with 58% of children with Concomitant SCD having a history of DLD compared to 24% of those without.
03For Discrepant SCD, male sex was a significant risk factor, with an estimated 82% of cases being male compared to 54% in the non-SCD group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The data were collected nearly 20 years ago (8th-grade data from 2001-2003). The sample excluded bilingual children, those with hearing impairment, intellectual disability, and autism, limiting generalizability to these populations. There is no gold standard measure for SCD; the study used the CCC-2, which was not developed specifically for SCD and relies on parent report. The study used two different case definitions which yielded different prevalence estimates and risk factors, highlighting the lack of a clear operational definition for SCD. The analysis was limited to a narrow age range (8th grade).
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The study was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders, National Institutes of Health.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that a child with no history of structural language disorder (DLD) is free of social communication deficits. The study found that 9% of children without a DLD history met criteria for Concomitant SCD. Furthermore, the two different definitions used in the study produced different risk profiles (language history for one, sex for the other), so a single screening result may not capture the full picture.