Idiom understanding in Specific Language Impairment population and its relationship with pragmatics

Andrés-Roqueta, C. & Clemente, R.A

Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva, Educativa, Social y Metodología. Universitat Jaume I. Castellón de la Plana. Spain. E-mails: and

Idioms represent a kind of metaphorical language but with a high conventional component, and their understanding is dependent to the context where are said(Gernsbacher and Robertson, 1999). The degree in what the figurative meaning is deducible by the literal parts that form the idiomatic expression is called semantic transparency (Gibbs, 1991). In general, transparent idioms are easier to understand for children than opaque ones (Caillies and Le Sourn-Bissaoui, 2006). Children with learning disabilities have a particular difficulty in using and the understanding idioms, above all those who have less language competence (Frazier Norbury, 2004; Rinaldi, 2000). However, it is not clear if this difficulty for processing idiomatic expressions shown is general to all subjects with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and Pragmatic Language Impairment (PLI) (Vance and Wells, 1994), or increases in those children with more pragmatic impairments (Kerbel and Grunwell, 1998a, 1998b). Therefore, the aim of this study is to check if the lack of competence to understand figurative language increases in children with more pragmatic disabilities inside the language disorders, taking into account two conditions: semantic opacity (transparent idioms/opaque idioms) and pragmatic simplification (visual recognition/verbal definition).

To achieve this goal, 35 children language disorders (-1 SD in a receptive grammar task, sentence recall task or both) and 35 typically developing children (TD) were recruited. Language disordered population was divided according to individuals’ pragmatic skills (-1 SD on a pragmatic subscale) into two groups: typical SLI (SLI: n=19) and SLI with more pragmatic problems (SLI+P: n=16). The sample was assessed with two instruments:

- Idiom definition task (verbal condition). 20 Spanish idioms were selected and they were grouped according to their semantic opacity in two groups: Transparent idioms (e.g. “Being like a goat(estar como una cabra)” being mad) and Opaque idioms (e.g. “To take her hair (tomar el pelo)”  to deceive). Every child was asked to define each idiom (“What does XXX mean?”), and their responses were scored following Frazier Norbury’s (2004) criteria: 2 points (figurative meaning), 1 point (partially-incorrect meaning, but not literal) and 0 points (omissions and literal meanings).

- Visual recognition idiom task. Seven idioms from the list of the verbal task were selected to create a visual recognition condition. Like in the other task, the examiner told the idiom to the children and then asked them to choose the correct meaning for that expression between two pictures (one with the literal meaning and the other with the figurative meaning).

On the one hand, results regarding Semantic Opacity (transparent / opaque) showed that children with SLI showed more problems than TD in the transparent idioms (U=192.00, p= .020), but not in the opaque ones (U=217.00, p= .065). However, SLI+P group performed lower than TD group in both groups of idioms (Transparent: U=83.00, p= .000// Opaque: U=84.00, p= .000). Moreover, SLI group appeared to be more competent than SLI+P group in both groups of idioms (Transparent: U=73.50, Z=2.23, p= .025// Opaque: U=74.00, Z=2.22, p= .027).On the other hand, results regarding pragmatic simplification (verbal / visual) showed that both clinical groups chose less figurative meanings than TD group, but they performed similarly when compared between them (SLI – SLI+P). Within group-analysis showed that there weren’t significant differences in SLI and TD group, but the performance of SLI+P group improved in visual condition significantly (Z=-2.07, p = .038).

Data of this study states that idiomatic expressions challenge to all SLI population, as previous studies have shown (Frazier Norbury, 2004; Rinaldi, 2000). However, it has been demonstrated that opaque idioms are as difficult to understand as transparent ones for them, what is inconsistent with literature in typical developing children (Caillies and Le Sourn-Bissaoui, 2006;Gibbs, 1991), but consistent with some literature about pathological adults or children (Frazier Norbury, 2004). It is possible that the more opaque is an idiomatic expression, the more semantic information stores, and the access to the correct figurative meaning would only depend on having been exposed to them in conversations.It has been confirmed that SLI+P children had more problems to define idioms (Kerbel and Grunwell, 1998b), but the difference with the SLI group disappeared in the visual condition of the task, what is congruent with studies that didn’t find differences between children with SLI and PLI when pragmatic load was lower (Vance and Wells, 1994). And the fact that SLI+P children did benefit of visual condition lead us to think that the problem of this children must be that they are not expecting a figurative language, and for that reason, they don’t activate the necessary inferences and analogical processes to grasp it. It is likely that poor pragmatic abilities could be limiting them to figurative language access in conversational exchanges with people, and that would imply that they can only get the figurative meaning of those idioms said when the things/objects/people or referents implied are present (and contextual derivation is more evident), but they would have problems to learn them from the conversation about things/people that are not present.In sum, this study states that there is a distinct profile in idiom resolution task between children with typical SLI and children with SLI and pragmatic problems. Therefore, the verbal definition task is presented like a useful tool to report of the problems of SLI+P to adjust their linguistic behaviour to a context, regardless of the semantic opacity of the idiomatic expressions.

Authors want to thank the grant GV/ 2015/092 financed byConselleria de Educación, Cultura y Deporte de la Generalitat Valenciana (Spain).

Referencias bibliográficas:

Caillies, S., and Le Sourn-Bissaoui, S. (2006). Idiom comprehension in French children: a cock-and-bull story. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 3(2), 189–206.

Frazier Norbury C.F. (2004). Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research; 47, 1179 –1193.

Gernsbacher, M. A. and Robertson, R. R. W. (1999). The role of suppression in figurative language comprehension. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1616-1630.

Gibbs, R. W. (1991). Semantic analyzability in children’s understanding of idioms. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 34: 613-620.

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Kerbel, D., and Grunwell, P.(1998b). A study of idiom comprehension in children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties. Part II: Between-groups results and discussion. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 33, 23–44.

Rinaldi, W. (2000). Pragmatic comprehension in secondary school-aged students with specific developmental language disorder. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 35, 1-29.

Vance, M., and Wells, B.(1994). The wrong end of the stick: Language-impaired children’s understanding of nonliteral language. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 10, 23–46.