The Future of Education

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Autism share some common features in language development, often making the diagnostic distinction between the two disorders particularly challenging (Hage et al., 2021). These overlaps may lead to diagnostic ambiguity, affecting diagnostic accuracy (Andreou et al., 2022). Although pragmatic difficulties have been documented in both populations, significant differences between the two populations have been observed (Hage et al., 2021). The aim of the present study is to investigate whether the assessment of pragmatic skills could contribute to the differential diagnosis of Greek speaking autistic children and children with DLD. 25 children with DLD (Mean age=84.09 months) and 25 autistic children (Mean age=84.19 months), matched for chronological age and gender participated in the study. Pragmatic skills were examined using the Greek version of Children's Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2, Bishop, 2003; Georgiou & Spanoudis, 2021). Specifically, the following scales of CCC-2 were used: Coherence, inappropriate initiation, stereotyped language, use of context, non-verbal communication, social relations and interests. Results showed significant differences across most measures with autistic children generally scoring lower than DLD children. The findings are examined in the context of diagnostic differentiation between the two populations. Pragmatic language, and in particular the pragmatic abilities in which differences are observed between the two groups, could potentially function as discriminative markers between the disorders. Consequently, the assessment of pragmatic skills, in combination with other diagnostic measures, may contribute to achieving more complete and accurate diagnoses.