%0 Journal Article
%T The Pragmatic Language Skills of Severely Neglected 42
%A Audette Sylvestre
%A Caroline Bouchard
%A Jean Leblond
%A M¨¦lissa Di Sante
%J Child Maltreatment
%@ 1552-6119
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1077559519828838
%X The goals of this study were twofold: (1) to compare the pragmatic language skills (i.e., social communication skills) of 42-month-old neglected children with those of same-aged non-neglected children and (2) to measure the prevalence of pragmatic difficulties among the neglected children. The study sample was composed of 45 neglected and 95 non-neglected 42-month-old French-speaking children. The Language Use Inventory: French (LUI-French) was completed with all parents. This measure, comprised of 159 scored items divided into 10 subscales, was used to assess the children¡¯s pragmatic skills. The 10th percentile on the LUI-French (95% confidence interval ) was used to identify children with pragmatic difficulties. The neglected children had lower scores than the non-neglected children on all 10 dimensions of pragmatics evaluated (p < .01), as well as lower LUI-French Total Scores (p < .001). The effect sizes of these differences varied between 0.84 and 2.78. Forty-four percent of the neglected children presented significant pragmatic difficulties compared to 4.2% of their non-neglected peers (p < .001). It can be concluded that exposure to neglect significantly compromises children¡¯s pragmatic skills. These results support the need for interventions geared toward neglected children and their families to support the early development of their pragmatic skills
%K child neglect
%K preschoolers
%K child and adolescent development
%K cognitive development
%K children with disabilities
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077559519828838