La conciencia pragmática de adultos con síndrome de Asperger

Pragmatic awareness is a complex concept associated with a hybrid cognitive science such as psycholinguistics. In this case, the process related to the perception of one's own linguistic use and the capacity to report it, is analysed. The first step was to elaborate a Pragmatic Awareness Questionnaire (PAQ), composed of 26 items, using a Likert scale, which was answered by 18 male patients diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS), and 18 adults with typical development (TD). The objective was, on the one hand, to study the dimensionality of PAQ, applying an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and, on the other, to compare the average amongst the answers to each pragmatic item according to the group by performing a Mann-Whitney U test. The results revealed a three-factor structure for the PAQ and the categories were divided into three pragmatic dimensions: enunciative, textual and interactive. Adults with AS, in general, did not show significant differences in items related to textual area (message, lexical and grammatical domains). However, in enunciative and interactive areas they exhibited deficits with regard to TD adults. The present work represents a first approach to the analysis of communicative behaviour (verbal and non-verbal) of young adults with AS.