Journal of Communication Disorders 40 (2007) 357381

Answering contextually demanding questions:

Pragmatic errors produced by children with
Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism
Soile Loukusa a,*, Eeva Leinonen b, Katja Jussila c,
Marja-Leena Mattila c, Nuala Ryder b, Hanna Ebeling c,
Irma Moilanen c
a

Department of Finnish, Information Studies and Logopedics, University of Oulu,

P.O. Box 1000, Oulu, FIN-90014 Finland
b
Department of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
c
Clinic of Child Psychiatry, University and University Hospital of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
Received 17 January 2006; received in revised form 7 August 2006; accepted 5 October 2006

Abstract
This study examined irrelevant/incorrect answers produced by children with Asperger syndrome
or high-functioning autism (79-year-olds and 1012-year-olds) and normally developing children
(79-year-olds). The errors produced were divided into three types: in Type 1, the child answered the
original question incorrectly, in Type 2, the child gave a correct answer, but when asked a follow-up
question, he/she explained the answer incorrectly, and in Type 3, the child first gave a correct answer
or explanation, but continued answering, which ultimately led to an irrelevant answer. Analyses of
Type 1 and 2 errors indicated that all the children tried to utilize contextual information, albeit
incorrectly. Analyses of Type 3 errors showed that topic drifts were almost non-existent in the control
group, but common in the clinical group, suggesting that these children had difficulties in stopping
processing after deriving a relevant answer.
Learning outcomes: The reader becomes aware of the different instances which may lead to the
irrelevance of answers and get knowledge about features of answers of children with AS/HFA.
# 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 7772 596983.

E-mail address: soile.loukusa@oulu.fi (S. Loukusa).
0021-9924/$ see front matter # 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2006.10.001

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1. Introduction
Linguistic skills are not enough for successful communication. In communicative
situations people need to utilize context in comprehension and construct meaning by
inferencing. Additionally, people need to give the right amount of information and to
maintain topics in conversations (Leinonen, Letts, & Smith, 2000). Asperger syndrome
(AS) and high-functioning autism (HFA) belong to the category of pervasive
developmental disorders (PDD) which are characterized by difficulties in social
interaction, impairments in communication and language, and restricted and repetitive
patterns of behavior (ICD-10, World Health Organisation, 1993). The language
skills of individuals with AS/HFA are often within the normal range, and
communication problems are mostly characterized by pragmatic aspects of language
(e.g. Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1999a, 2000; Ramberg, Ehlers, Nyden, Johansson, &
Gillberg, 1996).
1.1. Pragmatic language ability in normal development
Understanding of deviant pragmatic language is based on the knowledge about normal
development. However, because this study focuses on deviant language, we only give some
general lines concerning normal development of pragmatic language.
Development of pragmatic ability can be defined as childrens progressing ability to
use context in language comprehension and expression (Leinonen et al., 2000). Already
from an early age, children are able to take context into account when formulating and
interpreting linguistic expressions (e.g. Bezuidenhout & Sroda, 1998; Bishop, 1997;
ONeill, 1996). However, only after development continues do children start to provide
answers that take the listeners needs into account (Anselmi, Tomasello, & Acunzo,
1986; Shatz & McCloskey, 1984). Between the ages of five and nine children start to
express themselves more economically, i.e. they learn to focus on relevant information
and to recognize that there is no need to tell the listener everything (Karmiloff-Smith,
1986).
Studies of pragmatic comprehension in normally developing children have shown that
in addition to an increase in relevant answers, incorrect/irrelevant answer types also reflect
childrens increasing ability to use relevant contextual information (Letts & Leinonen,
2001; Ryder & Leinonen, 2003). With increasing age, children learn to utilize and connect
various specific contextual factors, and their answers no longer rely so strongly on their
knowledge of how objects generally function in the world (Hudson & Slackman, 1990;
Strohner & Nelson, 1974). The use of irrelevant answers also decreases (Marinac &
Ozanne, 1999). Therefore, as they develop, children focus more and more on relevant
contextual factors only. Even if young children have many pragmatic abilities, achieving
the ability to utilize contextual information in varying communication situations in a
flexible way is a long developmental process (Bucciarelli, Colle, & Bara, 2003; Lloyd,
Camaioni, & Ercolani, 1995). Thus, more sophisticated pragmatic development continues
throughout childhood, and this development is affected by many factors, such as childrens
experiences (Milosky, 1992), level of mind-reading (Bara, Bosco, & Bucciarelli, 1999) and
level of inference abilities (Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001).

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1.2. Pragmatic language skills in Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism

AS and HFA are characterized by pragmatic difficulties in both language expression
and comprehension (e.g. Adams, Green, Gilchrist, & Cox, 2002; Dennis, Lazenby, &
Lockyer, 2001; Losh & Capps, 2003; Norbury & Bishop, 2002; Ramberg et al., 1996).
Individuals with AS/HFA are usually willing to communicate, but because of pragmatic
problems they have difficulty in communicating in a relevant manner (Bogdashina, 2005;
Landa, 2000). Pragmatic language comprehension difficulties in individuals with AS/
HFA are evident when there is a need to utilize contextual information and integrate
information from different sources (Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1999a, 1999b, 2000; Noens
& van Berckelaer-Onnes, 2005; Norbury & Bishop, 2002; Ozonoff & Miller, 1996). In the
study by Norbury and Bishop (2002), story comprehension tasks were presented to
normally developing children and children with HFA, specific language impairment
(SLI), and pragmatic language impairment (PLI). They were asked questions about the
literal content of the story and questions requiring inferencing (text-connecting and gapfilling). The results showed that the group of normally developing children performed
better than the clinical groups in these tasks, but the scores between the clinical groups
were quite similar. However, it was the children with HFA who most typically gave
answers that were irrelevant to the story context. The study of Dennis et al. (2001) found
that compared to normally developing control children, children with AS/HFA showed
specific pragmatic inference deficits affecting their ability to infer the implication of an
utterance and to make inferences about social scripts, metaphors and speech acts. The
differences between the groups increased in relation to the amount of inferencing and
intentionality of the tasks.
Studies of language expression have found that individuals with AS/HFA have
difficulties in narrative and discourse abilities. They have difficulties in producing
thematically integrated narratives independently (Losh & Capps, 2003), using clear
cohesive links in expressions (Fine, Bartolucci, Szatmari, & Ginsberg, 1994), and they
have a tendency to change the topic to express their own personal interests (Attwood,
1998). It has also been shown that children with AS/HFA have difficulties in making
references to thoughts and beliefs in the context of a structured conversation (Ziatas,
Durkin, & Pratt, 2003). Using applied discourse analysis, it has been shown that children
with AS responded to the questions and comments, but their responses were often
pragmatically problematic in both general and emotion-based conversation (Adams et al.,
2002). Compared to children with severe conduct disorder, the responses of children with
AS did not fit well to the social or communicative context. For example, there were answers
that reflected problems in knowing what other people know about the subject (shared
information).
Eales (1993) analyzed conversation samples of individuals with autism and
developmental receptive language disorder (RLD) using methods developed by Bishop
and Adams (1989) in their study concerning conversation characteristics of children with
language impairment. Eales found that impairment of relevant communicative intentions
and stereotyped language use was more typical of individuals with autism compared to
those with RLD. These disordered communicative areas of individuals with autism were
connected to the difficulties found earlier in children with semanticpragmatic disorder

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(Bishop & Adams, 1989). In these children, the inappropriacy of utterances was caused by
the message itself, not by how it was conveyed.
1.3. Relevance theory as a theoretical framework
Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) is a theory of inferential pragmatics that
aims to explain how the hearer interprets the speakers meaning on the basis of contextual
factors. Relevance theory is based on the assumption that utterances have many possible
interpretations which are compatible with the given linguistic information, but these
interpretations are not equally accessible in specific situations. This means that in any
specific context, all possible interpretations are not equally likely to come to a hearers
mind. According to relevance theory, human communication is driven by search for
relevance. When processing language, people utilize relevant contextual information in
deriving the meaning of the utterance. Contextual information encompasses all the
information utilized when interpreting an expression in a particular situation, including
linguistic and physical information and the persons own knowledge of the world. People
automatically pay attention to information that is relevant to them, and therefore they do
not try to process all available information. Thus, peoples cognitive system tends towards
processing the most relevant information. This tendency is known as the cognitive
principle of relevance (Sperber & Wilson, 1995; Wilson, 2000). In the comprehension
process the hearer follows a path of least processing effort when accessing contextual
information and stops when the interpretation meets his/her expectations. Earlier studies
have found that individuals with AS and HFA have difficulties in focusing on relevant
contextual information (Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1999a, 1999b, 2000; Norbury & Bishop,
2002). On the basis of relevance theory this might suggest that these difficulties cause a
weaknesses in searching for relevance.
Because the search for relevance is a basic feature of human cognition, people aim to
use only relevant utterances, a phenomenon known as the communicative principle of
relevance. Every expressed utterance should be relevant enough to be worth processing,
which means that every expression conveys a presumption of its optimal relevance. This
optimal relevance means that an utterance is relevant enough for the hearer to make it worth
processing and that the utterance is sufficiently clear so that the speaker can make his/her
intention manifest. The processing effort is seen as a constraint. Therefore, the greater the
processing effort, the lower the relevance of the utterance. It has been found that even if
individuals with AS or HFA have the ability to offer an answer to a question, these answers
are not always relevant to the social or communicative context (Adams et al., 2002; Happe,
1993).
Recent experimental studies have provided evidence for the central claims of relevance
theory (e.g. Van der Henst & Sperber, 2004; Van der Henst, Sperber, & Politzer, 2002).
People pay attention only to relevant information and produce only relevant utterances, and
when interpreting utterances, they go for the first relevant interpretation. Studies with
normal children have shown that relevance theory has developmental validity (Loukusa,
Leinonen, & Ryder, 2005, April; Ryder & Leinonen, 2003). Children are first able to
answer questions that are contextually easier, and with increasing age they achieve the
ability to answer contextually more demanding questions, such as questions demanding

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361

processing of implicatures. Incorrect answer types also change along with progressing
development.
Relevance theory has also been applied to the exploration of communication difficulties
in children with SLI and PLI (Leinonen & Kerbel, 1999; Leinonen, Ryder, Ellis, &
Hammond, 2003) and individuals with autism (Happe, 1993). Happe compared the theory
of mind levels with the levels of understanding similes, metaphors and irony. According to
relevance theory, similes can be understood at a purely literal level, while metaphors
require some understanding of intentions, whereas irony requires understanding of secondorder metarepresentation. As suggested by relevance theory, the results showed that the
degree of metarepresentation ability had an association with the degree of comprehension
of figurative language. The deficits of individuals with autism were restricted into
inferential communication, whereas the ability to use code communication was relatively
normal. This result has later been confirmed by Surian, Baron-Cohen, and Van der Lely
(1996) who compared normally developing children, children with SLI and children with
HFA in tasks demanding the detection of utterances that violated conversational maxims.
The results showed that children with HFA had difficulties in detecting pragmatic
violations, but not in control tasks demanding detection of grammatical violations.
Performance in pragmatic tasks was connected with false belief reasoning. Surian et al.
concluded that without the ability to represent propositional attitudes one cannot exploit
the presumption of relevance in interpreting utterance or in evaluating its adequacy
(p. 65).
1.4. The study
The data analyzed in this paper build on a previous study (Loukusa et al., in press) that
examined how children with AS/HFA and normally functioning children answered
questions with differing contextual demands. In that study we found that children with AS/
HFA had some weaknesses when answering implicature, routine, and enrichment
questions. In addition, their answer scores on feeling questions were not as high as the
scores of control children, although this difference did not achieve significance. All
children performed near the ceiling level in reference assignment questions, contextually
the easiest question type. Even though our earlier study showed that children with AS/
HFA have some difficulties in contextual processing, it did not explore the qualitative
aspects of the childrens answers. For instance, it did not examine whether or not children
with AS/HFA utilize some contextual information when answering incorrectly and
whether the correct answers of children with AS/HFA were qualitatively similar to or
different from the answers of normally developing children. The purpose of this paper is to
explore all these answers that were judged to be somehow irrelevant/incorrect. The
relevancy of the answers was judged on the basis of relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson,
1995; Van der Henst et al., 2002). When deriving an answer the children were expected to
utilize a relevant part of the context, but in addition they were also expected to stop
processing after giving a correct answer. Here, relevant does not therefore only mean that
an answer is on the topic, but the answer must also be appropriately informative to the
hearer.
More specifically, in this study there were three irrelevant/incorrect error types.

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Type 1: Children were judged to have answered the original question incorrectly
(incorrect/irrelevant answer).
Type 2: Children first gave a correct answer, but when a follow-up question was asked in
an attempt to elicit an explanation, the children gave an irrelevant/incorrect explanation.
Type 3: Children first answered or explained their answer correctly, but then continued
unnecessarily with their answer, which led to topic drift and an irrelevant answer.
This study examines data in relation to these different types of irrelevant/incorrect
answer categories. The data of Type 1 and 2 errors were analyzed by using subcategories
reflecting how the children utilize the contextual information that is available to them in
their incorrect answers. In relation to Type 3 errors, we explored how the childrens use of
contextual information may have led to topic drift.

2. Methods
2.1. Participants
One group of normally functioning children (aged 79 years) and two groups of children
with AS/HFA (aged 79 years and 1012 years) participated in this study (Table 1). All
children came from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds and all were native Finnish
speakers.
The two groups of children with AS/HFA consisted originally of 42 children
diagnosed or suspected with AS or HFA living in the area of Northern Ostrobothnia
Hospital District in Finland. These participants were drawn from three routes: (1)
outpatient children with AS/AS traits in the University Hospital of Oulu (n = 28), (2)
three siblings of the outpatient children with AS/AS traits, suspected with AS (n = 3),
and (3) the total population epidemiological study of AS (Mattila et al., in press)
(n = 11). The diagnoses of the outpatient children with AS/AS traits had been assigned
based on diagnostic criteria regarding present behavior stated in the ICD-10; a
differential diagnosis between AS and HFA had thus not been made. In this study,

Table 1
Participant characteristics

Age
The Boston Naming Test a
Auditory associationb
VIQ
PIQ

Control

Younger AS/HFA

Older AS/HFA

p1

p2

p3

8;7 (0.85)
45.7 (6.23)
32.9 (6.44)

8;6 (0.73)
46.9 (5.29)
31.1 (7.42)
106.3 (11.2)
100.2 (11.0)

11;2 (0.56)
52.2 (6.06)
37.3 (2.88)
114.2 (20.8)
104.6 (18.2)

ns
ns

<0.001
0.004

0.003
0.001

Note: aMax 60 points. bMax 42 points, subtest of ITPA. Ages and test scores are presented as means (standard
deviations are in parentheses). p1 = comparison between the control group and the younger AS/HFA group;
p2 = comparison between the control group and the older AS/HFA group; p3 = comparison between the younger
AS/HFA group and the older AS/HFA group. MannWhitney U-test, 2-tailed, p < 0.05 means a significant
difference, and ns means no significant difference.

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363

childrens developmental and symptom history was acquired by interviewing the

parents by using the Autism Diagnostic InterviewRevised (ADI-R, Lord, Rutter, &
LeCouteur, 1995), and their behavior and communication skills were observed by using
the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS, Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, & Risi,
2000). In addition early development was checked from the patient records of Oulu
University Hospital. School day observation was performed in the case of subjects for
whom verification was considered to be essential after the ADI-R interviews. The ADIR interviews of parents and the ADOS investigations of children were done by a
pediatrician (M-LM) or a psychologist (KJ), both trained in the use of the ADI-R and
the ADOS for research purposes. However, firstly because interrater reliabilities for
these instruments were not yet established and secondly because there are no
algorithms precisely for Asperger Syndrome, the algorithms were not used, but the
instruments were used in a clinical way to achieve a structured history and for
observation of the children. After these investigations the diagnoses were defined in
detail by using the ICD-10 criteria based on information collected from the ADI-R,
ADOS, patient records and school day observations, now also taking into account
development during the first three years of life. The diagnoses were performed by the
consensus of the pediatrician and a child psychiatrist, both clinically experienced in
PDDs (Mattila et al., in press), or by the psychologist discussing with the pediatrician
in the case of subjects for whom a second opinion was considered to be essential. In
these diagnostic evaluations 27 children met the diagnosis for AS and 13 for HFA. Two
children did not meet the diagnostic criteria for AS or HFA and they were excluded
from this study. One child with HFA had great co-operation difficulties in the language
test situation, and he was also excluded from this study. Thus, the study finally included
39 children: 27 children with AS and 12 with HFA.
Because many studies have recently recognized that the distinction between HFA and
AS is not clear (e.g. Frith, 2004; Howlin, 2003), the two diagnostic groups were combined
in order to maximize the sample size so that it was possible to divide the children into two
groups according to their ages. This gave us the possibility to get information about the
developmental changes in children with AS/HFA. The two groups are referred to as the
younger AS/HFA group (79-year-olds, n = 16) and the older AS/HFA group (1012-yearolds, n = 23).
The group of normally functioning children (control group, n = 23) attended two
mainstream schools in Oulu, Finland. They had normal school performance and no current
or earlier developmental problems, which was verified by asking their parents to complete
a preliminary data sheet of developmental history as well as by using the High-Functioning
Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ, Ehlers, Gillberg, & Wing, 1999). The
age range of the control group was chosen to be equal to that of the younger AS/HFA group.
Prior to this study, the test material of pragmatic questions was used to assess the
development of 210 normally developed 39-year-old Finnish children. In that study,
normally developed 8- and 9-year-old children performed near the ceiling level when
answering these questions, which is why older control children were not used in the present
study (Loukusa et al., 2005, April).
Normal intelligence of the children with AS/HFA was ensured using Weschler IQ scales
(Table 1). In addition, normal language development of all of the children was checked by

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the Boston Naming Test (Kaplan, Goodglass, & Weintraub, 1983; Laine, KoivuselkaSallinen, Hanninen, & Niemi, 1997) and the auditory association subtest of the Illinois Test
of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA, Blafield & Kuusinen, 1974; Kirk, McCarthy, & Kirk,
1968). These tests are generally widely used by speech therapists in Finland in the
assessment of vocabulary and auditive reasoning abilities of children. Comparisons
between the groups showed that the control group and the younger AS/HFA group were
equivalent in these test results. As expected on the basis of the childrens ages, the older
AS/HFA group performed significantly better than the control group and the younger AS/
HFA group (Table 1).
2.2. Materials
The materials used in this study were constructed using the framework of relevance
theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). The children were presented with questions requiring
utilization of contextual information in inferencing as suggested by relevance theory. The
questions were connected to pictures, verbal scenarios and/or a story presented in short
chunks in order to minimize memory load. In the present study we analyzed childrens
answers to 31 questions. In all of these questions the children had to utilize contextual
information when deriving a correct answer. However, according to relevance theory, all
utterances are not similar as to their contextual demands, and the questions can be divided
into different types depending on the level of contextual processing required by the child
(Sperber & Wilson, 1995; Ryder & Leinonen, 2003). In this study we did not analyze
reference assignment questions because all groups performed near the ceiling level in
these questions, which is why incorrect answers were almost lacking. Therefore, in this
study the analyzed test material consists of nine questions which required processing of
enrichment, nine questions which required the processing of implicatures, nine questions
which required processing of routine answers, and five questions which required
processing of information relating to the feelings of other people. To answer the
enrichment questions the child had to enrich incomplete semantic information on the basis
of the given context and his/her world knowledge. The questions targeting the recovery of
implicatures required the child to connect his/her world knowledge with the given visual
and/or verbal context in order to derive the intended meaning. The routine questions
required the children to utilize contextual information in a familiar everyday context,
which may lead to automatic accessing of routine answers. Feeling questions targeted
the feelings of someone in the scenario. The question types are described in more detail in
Loukusa et al. (in press), and examples of the different question types can be found in
Appendices A and B. Even though we used these different question types in the analysis of
correct answers, it did not make sense to analyze the incorrect answers in such a finegrained way, as this would have yielded small sample sizes because of the small number of
incorrect/irrelevant answers per individual question type. Therefore, in order to maximize
sample size, categorization was made from the total sum of incorrect answers within each
group.
In addition to strategies used by the children when getting an answer wrong, we also
looked at the incorrect explanations that the children gave to their originally correct
answers. If the child answered the question correctly, a follow-up question requiring an

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365

explanation for the correct answer was asked. This was done in relation to 22 questions, as
not all of the questions had a follow-up question requiring an explanation. The follow-up
questions were formulated as one of the following two: How do you know that? or
Why do you think so?
2.3. Categorization of errors
2.3.1. Type 1 and 2 errors
The childrens incorrect answers (Type 1) and incorrect explanations (Type 2) were
analyzed to explore how the children used the contextual information. Type 1 and 2 errors
were classified into seven subcategories (see examples in Appendix A). The subcategories
were modified on the basis of earlier studies by Letts and Leinonen (2001) and Ryder and
Leinonen (2003). Some influence has also been taken from the study of Marinac and
Ozanne (1999).
Incorrect focus. The answer shows understanding of what was happening in the scenario,
but failed to address the focus of the question accurately, so the answer remains inaccurate
and therefore the answer cannot be accepted as being correct. Although the child was not
able to answer the question accurately, the answer does not show any utilization of an
irrelevant part of the context. The incorrect answers classified into this category are closest
to the correct answers when compared to the other categories.
World knowledge. The child gave general information or talked about his/her own
experiences, which were in some way loosely semantically connected to the question, but
did not fit into the particular context of the question. Therefore, the answer shows that the
child has used world knowledge in an incorrect way without utilizing specific contextual
information relevant for this particular question.
Given information. The child used given pictorial or verbal information inappropriately.
The answer referred to some aspect of the picture or the verbal scenario, but the aspect was
not relevant to this particular question.
Dont know. The child answered I dont know.
Totally irrelevant. The answer did not contain anything that could be connected with the
context of the question.
Tautology. The child repeated the question or part of it.
No answer. The child gave no reply and did not take his/her turn.
Turntaking (this category refers only to Type 2 errors). The child used a routine phrase to
answer. For example, when asked a why question (Why do you think so?) the child
answered simply Because and when asked a how question (How do you know that?) the
child answered Like that.

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Other. The childs answer did not fit into any of the categories above.
2.3.2. Type 3 errors
According to relevance theory, people use only relevant utterances and stop when their
processing meets an expectation (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). Here we were interested in
capturing the topic drift that took place after a child had given a correct answer or a
correct explanation but continued the answer inappropriately, which ultimately led to
irrelevancy. In these answers the childs inferencing was first successful (first classified as a
correct answer or an explanation), but then the child drifted away from the original answer.
We are aware that sub-categorization of these data produces small sample sizes. However,
we think that it is informative to explore these data in more detail so that we can gain a
better understanding of the childrens communicative failure. Therefore, we classified the
data into four subcategories, the first two of which are aspects of over-utilization of world
knowledge (see examples in Appendix B).
Own experience. Context of the question evoked some experience which the child started
to talk about. In most instances, one experience started a train of thoughts triggering other
related experiences that the child then mentioned one after another.
General information. The child started to say something about his/her general knowledge,
which was first somehow connected with the irrelevant part of the context. In some answers
the topic drift seemed to be triggered by some aspect of the picture that seemed to be used
as a bridge to some specific general information the child wanted to tell the researcher
about. In this kind of situation the childs answer was classified into this category (general
information) because we thought that the childs wish to say something about his/her
knowledge was the main reason for the topic drift, rather than the pictorial information the
child first used as a bridge to the interest.
Given information. The child started to tell about or comment on something about the
given context that was irrelevant to the question. These answers were usually connected
with the information in the picture.
Other. The child made a comment that was totally irrelevant to the topic of the
question. These irrelevant answers were usually quite short, but their content felt quite
distracting.
2.4. Procedure
A speech therapist administered the study materials in a structured test situation. The
research sessions were videotaped and the childrens answers to the questions were later
orthographically transcribed and analyzed by the speech therapist. To confirm the
reliability of analysis, 12 children were randomly selected and interrater reliability
(intraclass correlation coefficient) was calculated. When scoring topic drifts, interrater
reliability was calculated between two speech therapists and in other cases between a
speech therapist and a final-year speech therapy student. The raters were blind to the

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367

childrens group status. They were familiar with relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson,
1995), so they had the ability to focus their attention on contextual information and the
childrens comprehension strategies. Before scoring, all categories and instructions
for scoring were discussed with the raters in order to make sure that they had
understood the categorization system. Interrater reliability between two raters was as
follows: correct/incorrect scoring 0.990, classification of answers 0.899, classification
of explanations 0.890, scoring of topic drifts 0.984, and classification of topic
drifts 0.897.
2.5. Statistical analysis
Non-parametric MannWhitney U-test was used to analyze the data because of small
group sizes and unequal variances in the data. Because there were fewer children in the
younger AS/HFA group than in the other two groups and each group had a different number
of incorrect answers, the answer scores of Type 1 and 2 errors were converted into relative
frequency scores (the number of incorrect answers in the category in proportion to all
incorrect answers in the group). The group differences between relative frequency
distributions in the incorrect answer categories (Type 1) and in the incorrect explanation
categories (Type 2) were analyzed. In Type 3 errors the number of topic drifts between the
groups was compared. After that the childrens topic drifts were classified into different
subcategories. However, we did not compare the categories of Type 3 errors statistically
because the control group had only one topic drift, and the purpose of these subcategories
was simply to explore the types of topic drifts qualitatively.

3. Results
3.1. Type 1 errors
The total number of incorrect answers was greater in both AS/HFA groups when
compared to the control group (Table 2). However, relative frequency scores showed that
the answer categories were quite similarly divided across the groups. In all of the groups,
most of the incorrect answers were found to be in the categories incorrect focus and
world knowledge (Table 2). The only statistically significant differences in terms of
relative frequency distribution were found in the given information category between the
control group and the younger AS/HFA group (U = 114.000, n = 23, n = 16, p = 0.023) and
between the control group and the older AS/HFA group (U = 161.500, n = 23, n = 23,
p = 0.018). The control group had not any given information answers, whereas about 13%
of the answers of the younger AS/HFA group and 9% of the answers of the older AS/HFA
group were classified as given information.
3.2. Type 2 errors
The total number of incorrect explanations was greater in both AS/HFA groups when
compared to the control group (Table 3). Relative frequency comparisons showed that the

368

Incorrect answer
category

Control group, n = 23

Abs. f a
Incorrect focus
Knowledge
Given information
Dont know
Irrelevant
Tautology
Other

22
9
0
6
0
1
2

Total

40
a

Relative fb (%)
55
22.5
0
15
0
2.5
5
100

Younger AS/HFA, group n = 16

Older AS/HFA group, n = 23

Comparison of
relative f between
groups

Number of
childrenc

Abs. f a

Number of
children c

Abs. f a

Number of
childrenc

p1

p2

p3

13
6
0
6
0
1
1

22
25
10
12
2
6
1

14
13
9
4
1
2
1

28
26
8
15
2
9
2

12
12
8
5
2
5
2

ns
ns
0.023*
ns
ns
0.086
ns

ns
ns
0.018*
ns
ns
ns
ns

ns
ns
ns
ns
ns
ns
ns

78

90

Relative fb (%)
28.2
32.1
12.8
15.4
2.6
7.7
1.3
100
b

Relative fb (%)
31.1
28.9
8.9
16.7
2.2
10
2.2
100

Note: Absolute frequency of incorrect answers of the whole group in the category ( f). Relative frequency = ( f/y)  100%; where y means total number of incorrect
answers within each group. cNumber of children who had incorrect answers in the category. p1 = comparison between the control group and the younger AS/HFA group;
p2 = comparison between the control group and the older AS/HFA group; p3 = comparison between the younger AS/HFA group and the older AS/HFA group. Mann
Whitney U-test, two-tailed, *p < 0.05 means a significant difference, p = 0.10.05 means non-significant trend, and ns means no significant difference ( p > 0.1).

S. Loukusa et al. / Journal of Communication Disorders 40 (2007) 357381

Table 2
Categorization of Type 1 errors (incorrect answers)

Incorrect
explanation
category

Control group, n = 23

Younger AS/HFA group, n = 16

Older AS/HFA group, n = 23

Comparison of
relative f between
groups

Abs. f a Relative fb (%) Number of Abs. f a Relative fb (%) Number of Abs. f a Relative fb (%) Number of p1
children c
children c
children c
Incorrect focus
8
Knowledge
12
Given information 3
Dont know
14
Irrelevant
0
Tautology
1
Turntaking
11
Other
2
Total

51
a

15.7
23.5
5.9
27.5
0
2.0
21.6
3.9
100

6
5
3
9
0
1
5
2

12
28
11
12
2
8
13
3

89

13.5
31.5
12.4
13.5
2.2
9.0
14.6
3.4
100

8
11
4
5
2
6
7
1

17
34
26
12
1
7
12
1

110

15.5
30.9
23.6
10.9
0.9
6.4
10.9
0.9
100

14
17
14
5
1
6
5
1

p2

p3

ns
0.004*
ns
ns
ns
0.012*
ns
ns

ns
0.001*
0.002*
0.032*
ns
0.049*
ns
ns

ns
ns
0.027 *
ns
ns
ns
ns
ns

Note: Absolute frequency of incorrect explanations of the whole group in the category ( f). Relative frequency = ( f/y)  100%; where y means total number of incorrect
explanations within each group. cNumber of children who had incorrect explanations in the category. p1 = comparison between the control group and the younger AS/
HFA group; p2 = comparison between the control group and the older AS/HFA group; p3 = comparison between the younger AS/HFA group and the older AS/HFA
group. MannWhitney U-test, 2-tailed, *p < 0.05 means a significant difference and ns means no significant difference ( p > 0.1).

S. Loukusa et al. / Journal of Communication Disorders 40 (2007) 357381

Table 3
Categorization of Type 2 errors (incorrect explanations)

369

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S. Loukusa et al. / Journal of Communication Disorders 40 (2007) 357381

most common incorrect explanation type in the two AS/HFA groups was the incorrect use
of world knowledge. Although the world knowledge category was also common in the
control group, the number of incorrect explanations categorized as world knowledge was
significantly lower in the control group when compared to the younger AS/HFA group
(U = 73.500, n = 23, n = 16, p = 0.004) and the older AS/HFA group (U = 97.500, n = 23,
n = 23, p = 0.001). The most common category for the control group was dont know, and
there was a significant difference between the control group and the older AS/HFA group
(U = 147.500, n = 23, n = 23, p = 0.032). The older AS/HFA group had significantly more
incorrect explanations in the category given information when compared to the control
group (U = 107.500, n = 23, n = 23, p = 0.002) and the younger AS/HFA group
(U = 111.500, n = 23, n = 16, p = 0.027). The younger AS/HFA group had significantly
more incorrect explanations classified into the category tautology when compared to the
control group (U = 125.000, n = 23, n = 16, p = 0.012) and the older AS/HFA group
(U = 208.500, n = 23, n = 23, p = 0.049).
3.3. Type 3 errors
When comparing the number of topic drifts after the child had given a correct answer, all
groups performed differently from each other (Table 4). The control group had only one
topic drift, and its performance differed therefore from that of the younger AS/HFA group
(U = 43.500, n = 23, n = 16, p < 0.001), and the older AS/HFA group (U = 188.000,
n = 23, n = 23, p = 0.029). Additionally, there was a statistically significant age effect
between the two AS/HFA groups as the older AS/HFA group had fewer topic drifts
compared to the younger AS/HFA group (U = 100.500, n = 23, n = 16, p = 0.012).
Categorization of topic drifts revealed that after giving a correct answer many children
with AS/HFA began telling the researcher about their own experiences which were not
relevant to the question. The own experience category was especially common in the
younger AS/HFA group. In these own experience answers on the basis of the topic of the
question, the childs earlier experiences appeared to be triggered and were explicitly
expressed (see Appendix B). Another typical type of topic drift was an irrelevant comment
(other). Additionally, three children in the older AS/HFA group had a large number of
general information answers (Table 5).

Table 4
Frequency of topic drifts in each group
Number of
topic drifts

0
1
23
45
6

Control group,
n = 23

Younger AS/HFA
group, n = 16

Older AS/HFA
group, n = 23

fa

%b

fa

%b

fa

%b

22
1
0
0
0

95.7
4.3
0.0
0.0
0.0

3
3
7
1
2

18.8
18.8
43.8
6.3
12.5

14
4
2
1
2

60.9
17.4
8.7
4.3
8.7

Note: aNumber of children who had topic drifts. b% of the whole group.

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371

Table 5
Categorization of Type 3 errors (topic drifts)
Category

Own experience
General information
Given information
Other

Control group,
n = 23

Younger AS/HFA group,

n = 16

Older AS/HFA group,

n = 23

Sum a

Number of
childrenb

Sum of
answersa

Number of
childrenb

Sum of
answersa

Number of
childrenb

1
0
0
0

1
0
0
0

20
5
2
11

8
2
1
7

7
16
6
12

6
3
4
3

Note: aSum of topic drifts in each category. bNumber of children who had topic drifts in the category.

4. Discussion
This study aimed to explore three types of errors causing irrelevancy in answers given
by children with AS/HFA. In this study, relevancy of answers was defined on the basis of
relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). Therefore, it was expected that in the relevant
answer the child conveys information that is relevant in the given context, and after
deriving a correct answer he/she stops processing. We classified incorrect answers (Type 1)
and incorrect explanations (Type 2) into different subcategories according to how the
children utilized contextual information in their answers. Additionally, we explored
answers where a child had first answered a question correctly, but continued answering
after giving a correct answer, which led to topic drift (Type 3). This study enabled us to
explore the nature of the communication problems of children with AS/HFA which will
help in planning communication therapy more effectively.
It is generally known that children with AS/HFA have difficulties in utilizing and
focusing on relevant contextual information (Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 2000; Norbury &
Bishop, 2002). Within the relevance theoretic framework this might suggest difficulties in
the cognitive principle of relevance. In Type 1 errors we analyzed instances where focusing
on and processing of relevant contextual information failed. Our results showed that there
were only some significant differences between the types of incorrect answers given by the
control children and the children with AS/HFA (Type 1 errors). The majority of answers by
all children tended to fall into two categories, incorrect focus and world knowledge.
This indicated that when the childrens answers were incorrect, they were not totally
irrelevant, but the children tried to utilize their knowledge about the issue, albeit
incorrectly, or even if they stayed on the topic, they failed to accurately address the focus of
the question. In relation to Type 1 incorrect answers the only significant difference between
the groups was in the category given information. In these answers the children with AS/
HFA did not focus their answer on the given information which would have given them a
relevant answer, but on some other aspect of the given information which led to an incorrect
answer.
When looking at Type 2 errors (incorrect explanations given after initially getting
the answer correct) it was found that compared to the control group, both of the AS/
HFA groups had more incorrect explanations in the category world knowledge. This
might suggest that when trying to explain their own answers, overgeneralization of their

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own world knowledge is more typical for the children with AS/HFA than it is for
normally developing children. Most of the incorrect explanations of the control group
were classified into the dont know category. In the control group the large number of
dont know answers to follow-up questions is similar to the study by Letts and
Leinonen (2001), which found that normally developing 8-year-old children are aware
of when they do not know how to explain an answer and they do not go for the more
risky strategy of guessing. As compared to the control group, the younger AS/HFA
group had more tautological explanations. Although this category was not a dominant
category in the younger AS/HFA group, it showed that at least some children with AS/
HFA used this kind of less sophisticated strategy more often than normally developing
children when trying to explain their answers. By repeating an earlier answer or
question the child is trying to fulfill his/her obligation to explain his/her answer.
Therefore, tautology can also be seen as a strategy to survive the communicative
demand of the situation (Bogdashina, 2005).
This study showed that after first answering the question correctly, the number of Type 3
errors (topic drifts) was greater in both of the AS/HFA groups when compared to the
control group. In these topic drifts there were similarities with the inappropriacy of
utterances found earlier in adults with autism (Eales, 1993) and children with semantic
pragmatic disorder (Bishop & Adams, 1989). In the control group there was only one
situation where a child started to explain his experience in an incorrect way after giving a
correct answer. Children with AS/HFA had many topic drifts, and these were more
common in the younger AS/HFA group as compared to the older AS/HFA group. This
suggests that these kinds of irrelevant answers diminish in number during development. We
found topic drifts to be frequent in the children with AS/HFA in the current study, and it
may be that this is one identifying feature of the communication difficulties of these
children. The answers where a child with AS/HFA started to tell about his/her experiences
were often very long, violating the rules of normal communicative behavior. By the
end of the answer there appeared to be no connection with the context of the initial
question.
According to relevance theory, all humans have an automatic tendency to search for
relevance (see Sperber & Wilson, 1995). Therefore, on the basis of relevance theory we
could suggest that these topic drifts run counter to the presumption of optimal relevance.
Even if the child first succeeds in being optimally relevant when deriving an answer from
the context, he/she then fails to maintain relevance. Because people should use only
relevant utterances, we can suggest that these utterances do not follow the communicative
principle of relevance. When trying to interpret an answer of this kind, the listener has to
use additional cognitive effort in order to understand what the child is trying to convey. In
communicative situations these kinds of answers can cause communication to fail,
especially when communicating with peers who are not as capable or as willing to do the
additional processing necessary for understanding such non-relevant use of language.
This study has shown that some children with AS/HFA have difficulties in being
optimally relevant and in stopping processing after they have given a correct answer.
However, on the basis of relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) and earlier studies
about autism spectrum disorders (e.g. Eales, 1993; Happe, 1993; Surian et al., 1996) we can
only suggest some potential explanations for this phenomenon. Firstly, according to the

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373

relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure, when interpreting utterances people follow

the path of least effort and stop when their interpretation meets their expectations (Sperber
& Wilson, 1995). On the basis of this study it seems that perhaps due to poor inhibition of
train of thoughts, children with AS/HFA have difficulties in stopping processing after
deriving a relevant answer (expectations of relevance are satisfied) and therefore they
continue their thinking process aloud.
Secondly, in order to formulate an optimally relevant answer, the speaker needs the
ability to recognize the content of the hearers mind, such as what the hearer knows about
the subject and what the hearer can process (Sperber & Wilson, 2002; Wilson, 2000, 2005).
There is strong evidence that difficulties in mind-reading ability belong to the autism
spectrum disorders (e.g. Martin & McDonald, 2004; Baron-Cohen, 2000) and that this
ability is connected with the performance of pragmatic tasks (Happe, 1993; Surian et al.,
1996). In this study, when children with AS/HFA explained their experiences in an
irrelevant way, the answers were often difficult to interpret because the children did not
consider, for example, that their everyday life was unknown to the hearer. Therefore,
without the ability to understand the content of others mind it is not possible to achieve
relevance of an utterance, as is also suggested by Surian et al. (1996). Thirdly, it might also
be the case that it is not possible to separate the explanations for topic drift. According to
Perkins (2005), difficulties in language use are caused by combinations of linguistic,
cognitive and sensorimotor factors rather than one underlying factor responsible for this
kind of difficulty.
We believe that this study has shown many features that can benefit clinical
management of childrens communication difficulties. However, additional research is
needed with larger sample sizes, better matched groups and in more natural situations to
test the replication of the central findings of this study. In this study we analyzed
childrens irrelevant/incorrect answers in a formal test situation which made it
possible to plan contextual factors of the questions in advance. This helped us in
categorizing the childrens answers, which was also seen in the excellent interrater
reliabilities found in this study. However, because our test set-up was structured and the
test questions were based on familiar situations, the context of the questions was not as
complicated as it would be in natural communication situations where many challenging
contextual factors must be utilized at the same time in rapidly progressing
communication. Therefore, it is possible that our material was not sensitive enough
to detect smaller differences between groups. In this study, categorization of incorrect
answers was made from total sum of incorrect answers so it does not show whether the
increasing information load of different question types affected the childrens answer
types as suggested earlier by Sahlen and Nettelbladt (1993) in their study concerning
two children with semanticpragmatic disorder. However, if we had categorized
incorrect answers in each contextual question type, it would had yielded sample sizes so
small that it would not have been possible to make reliable conclusions about answer
type differences between groups.
Additionally, there were some limitations with the group comparison in this study.
Because the 79-year-old control children performed near the ceiling level, an older
control group was not used, and therefore there was no possibility to compare the older AS/
HFA group with normal children of the same age. In addition, more extensive

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S. Loukusa et al. / Journal of Communication Disorders 40 (2007) 357381

developmental data about the childrens abilities of comprehension and expression of

syntax would have given more information about similarities in their language level and
would have given more strength to the interpretation of the results.
4.1. Clinical implications
On the basis of this study we suggest that it may be useful to concentrate on at least
two areas in communication therapy with children with AS/HFA. Firstly, it might be
helpful to focus on how to utilize and connect various types of contextual information.
Even if this ability was not automatic for all children, the answers of the children in this
study showed that they were able to use contextual information appropriately in many
instances. Furthermore, incorrect answers given by these children demonstrated an
attempt to utilize contextual information. In clinical management it is common to
provide children with AS/HFA with very structured linguistic environments,
minimizing variability and ambiguity. These methods have been found to be successful
from the perspective of those communicating with the child. However, our study
suggests that these children were able to engage in some complex contextual processing
and that they had building blocks which would enable them to learn to process
increasingly complex contextual data. We suggest that if a child has difficulties in
understanding meaning, it may at times be helpful to explain what the intended
meaning is and how it can be derived, rather than to change the language expression to
one requiring less contextual processing. Secondly, it might be helpful to focus on how
to modify language use according to situation in order to show how different kinds of
situational and cultural demands differ in communicative situations and how the world
knowledge of other people differs from ones own knowledge of the world.
Additionally, it seems important that children with AS/HFA receive feedback for
their own inadequate utterances.
By comparing older and younger AS/HFA children we found that developmental
changes towards more relevant utterances were still taking place. We can therefore suppose
that rehabilitation of pragmatic language is also effective during these years because it is
directed to a developmentally sensitive area.
4.2. Conclusions
Regardless of the limitations involved in this study, we believe that this study
provided additional information about context utilization in children with AS/HFA. In
this study, relevance theory helped in the consideration of different facts that diminish
the relevancy of an utterance. The utterances relevancy can diminish, for example, due
to utilization of irrelevant contextual factors, failure to address the focus of the
question, or lack of ability to stop processing after deriving a correct answer. We found
normal, delayed and deviant features in the answers of children with AS/HFA. Incorrect
answers (Type 1 errors) were mostly similar between all groups, so that children with
AS/HFA used many of the same strategies as the control children when struggling to
produce a relevant answer. Incorrect explanations (Type 2 errors) were mostly similar
between both AS/HFA groups, but differed in some respects from the control group.

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375

Topic drifts (Type 3 errors) were the most common in the younger AS/HFA group,
while the performance of the older AS/HFA group fell in between the younger AS/HFA
group and the control group whose Type 3 errors were almost non-existent.
On the basis of this study we are not suggesting that pragmatic difficulties can
be explained by relevance theory alone, but it can help us in locating elements that may
cause communication breakdown. However, we wish to emphasize that it is helpful to use
different kinds of theoretical frameworks in clinical work, as has also been suggested by
Noens and van Berckelaer-Onnes (2005). We should consider different theories in order to
achieve the best possible explanations for the multidimensional communication problems
of each child. It is well known that children with AS/HFA are very heterogeneous;
therefore, it is always necessary to consider childrens deficits on an individual basis
because many underlying factors can cause similar pragmatic deficits. Understanding the
nature of communication problems in AS and HFA is challenging, and there is still a need
for studies focusing on different aspects of pragmatic communication of children at
different ages so that we can better understand the pathways of communication
development of these children and direct therapeutic support more accurately to
developmentally sensitive areas.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Professor Matti Lehtihalmes, Professor Pirjo Korpilahti, Kati
Tauriainen, Sirpa Sakko, Elina Kykyri, Sanna Kuusikko and Terttu Tapio for their
comments and help with this study. We are grateful for the children and their parents who
participated in this study. This study was supported by Helsingin Sanomat Centennial
Foundation, Finland, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Paivikki and Sakari Sohlberg
Foundation, Finland, The Friends of the Young Association, Finland, the Alma and K.
A. Snellman Foundation, Oulu, Finland, the Finnish Association of Speech Therapists, the
Child Psychiatric Research Foundation, Finland, and The National Alliance for Autism
Research (NAAR) grant of Professor David Pauls from Massachusetts General Hospital
and Harvard Medical School, USA.

Appendix A. Examples of categorization of Type 1 and 2 errors

The childrens answers have been translated literally from Finnish into English (note:
Finnish is a pro-drop language).
A. An example of an incorrect answer (Type 1) in the category incorrect focus
(enrichment question)
The researcher tells part of the story: . . . The woman runs over and calls the dog
to come to her. However, the dog doesnt obey the woman. Two boys are standing
near the dog watching them. The woman shouts Help! to the boys and
Here! to the dog. What does the woman mean when she shouts Here! to the
dog?

376

B.

C.

D.

E.

S. Loukusa et al. / Journal of Communication Disorders 40 (2007) 357381

A 10-year-old boy with AS answers: The woman has problems with the dog.
The expected answer: She wants (is trying to make) the dog to come back to her.
An example of an incorrect answer (Type 1) in the category world knowledge (feeling
question)
The researcher shows a picture of a boy sitting on the branch of a tree, with a wolf
underneath the boy at the bottom of the tree. The wolf is growling at the boy. A man
with a gun is walking nearby. The researcher reads the following verbal scenario
aloud and then asks a question: The boy sits up in the tree and a wolf is at the bottom
of the tree. How does the boy feel?
A 7-year-old boy with AS answers: Fun because he climbs up the tree. I always have
fun when I climb up a tree.
The expected answer: The boy is frightened. (All answers which express the boy
having some negative feeling are accepted.)
An example of an incorrect explanation (Type 2) to the correct answer of the category
given information (routine question)
The researcher shows a picture showing a girl and a boy playing in the garden. There
are a lot of childrens toys lying on the ground. Their mother is calling them from the
window. The researcher reads the following verbal scenario aloud and then asks a
question: The children are playing in the garden. The boy has a ball in his hand. The
mother shouts to the children: Dinner will be ready soon. What does the mother
mean?
A 7-year-old boy with AS initially answers correctly but when the researcher asks a
follow-up question (How do you know that?), the child explains his answer
incorrectly referring to something irrelevant in the picture: Because there is that
door (the child refers to the door of the picture).
The expected explanation: Normally people go inside to eat when food is ready./
Their mother asks them to come inside because she has made food.
An example of an incorrect answer (Type 1) in the category totally irrelevant (routine
question)
The researcher shows the child a picture where a father and a boy are starting to eat
their dinner. There is also a third plate on the table but there is not anyone sitting in that
place. A girl is standing near the window looking out of the window. The researcher
reads the following verbal scenario aloud and then asks a question: The father and boy
are sitting at the dining table but the girl looks out of the window. The father says to the
girl: Your food will get cold soon. Why does the father say so?
A 10-year-old girl with AS answers: That she doesnt come up for court.
The expected answer: A girl has to come to sit at the table and eat her dinner.
An example of an incorrect answer (Type 1) in the category tautology (implicature
question)
The researcher shows the child a picture with a mother and a girl. The girl has a dress
on and she is running. There are muddy puddles on the road. The girl has just stepped
in the puddle and the picture shows the mud splashing. The researcher reads the
following verbal scenario aloud and then asks a question: The girl with her best
clothes on is running on the dirty road. The mother shouts to the girl: Remember
that you have your best clothes on! What does the mother mean?

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377

A 9-year-old boy with AS answers: You have your best clothes on.
The expected answer: She cannot mess up her best clothes.

Appendix B. Examples of Type 3 errors (topic drifts)

The childrens answers have been translated literally from Finnish into English. The
adequate part of the answer is underlined. This part shows that the child has understood the
question correctly.
A. An example of the category own experience (enrichment question)
The researcher shows a picture showing a girl and a boy looking at a video. Their
mother comes into the room through the door: The researcher reads the following
verbal scenario aloud and then asks a question: The childrens school starts soon and
they should already be on their way to school. However, they are sitting in the
nursery looking at a video. Their mother comes to the door and says: Hurry up!
What does the mother mean?
An 8-year-old boy with HFA answers (relevant part of the answer is underlined):
That he that they should go to the school quickly. Our mother has invented such a
clever thing that she has set, set once when I, it-it- is right next to the ki-kitchen the
door you go through to the corridor as we live in an apartment building it is there the
kitchen door, the clock, is so clever that she has set it she wanted to set it five minutes
ahead so that is showed, if it shows like when I must go to the school first on Monday
at nine oclock, must be there nine oclock sharp, then on Tuesday, on Monday it
ends quarter or was it quarter past one or was it one oclock sharp then on Tuesday I
only had a three hour school day, those in the morning group had five hours and I-Ihad like it started at ten oclock on Tuesday and lasted till quarter past or was it one
oclock sharp and Wednesdays morning group and-and- evening group, when Im
in the evening group then-then-then- I have from ten till two then on Thursday I have
from nine, from nine till two then the evening group has five hours and then Pampulat
is the morning group and Pimpulat the evening group, then Pampulat has-has- only
a three hour school day like Pimpulat has on Tuesday and then on Friday everybody
starts at eight and lasts till twelve. We have physical education quarter past eight
sometimes we skip physical education.
B. An example of the category general information (routine question)
The researcher shows a picture where a girl is standing next to the oven and a mother
is standing next to the girl. A father and a boy are sitting at the table. There is food on
the table. The oven door is open and there is a pan in the oven. The researcher reads
the following verbal scenario aloud and then asks a question: A family is about to
start eating their dinner soon. A girl is standing near the oven (points to the girl).
The mother says to the girl: Be careful. What does the mother mean?
An 11-year-old boy with AS answers (relevant part of the answer is underlined):
That she wont burn herself by the way yet another odd thing (points to the table)
here there is perspective, but inside the oven there isnt any. This is a bit like when it
when er-er- when Finlands biggest wait, they were building railroads when an

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inspect-, wait, inspect-, an official came to inspect, that-that- they did. Why are those
rails narrowing over there (mimicking a haughty official)? See Mr. official
something, it-it-it- is this thing called perspective. Finlands railways will have none
of this perspective, remove it (mimicking a haughty official).
C. An example of the category given information (enrichment question)
For example (see the description of the picture and verbal scenario from the section
own experience): . . .Their mother comes to the door and says: Hurry up! What
does the mother mean?
An 11-year-old boy with AS answers (relevant part of the answer is underlined):
That they should go to school on time but they look like that, small so at first that
looked so strange that you could have presume, could have presumed it to be
forbidden to somebody their age. Because that looked a bit like a mess. (The boy
probably refers to the picture of the television screen.)
D. An example of the category other (implicature question)
The researcher shows a picture of a man mowing grass with a lawn mower. The grass
in front of the lawn mower is longer than the grass behind it. A woman is standing on
the lawn holding a rake. There is a flowerbed in the middle of the grass. The
researcher reads the following verbal scenario aloud and then asks a question: The
man is mowing the grass with a lawn mower. The woman says to the man: There are
flowers growing in the middle of the grass so remember to be careful. Why does the
woman say this?
A 9-year-old boy with AS answers and explains his answer correctly. However, after
giving a correct explanation (underlined) his answer to the follow-up question (How
do you know that?) becomes problematic:
Because women usually like flowers and they dont want to destroy them. Does he
destroy his feelings though he is mowing the lawn? He runs over every dandelion
there is.

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