Introduction

Explanations of acquired pragmatic disorders in adults are increasingly adopting some of the same theoretical constructs that have been used to account for developmental pragmatic disorders in children. As the discussion in Chapter 3 demonstrates, growing numbers of empirical studies are examining ToM impairments and executive dysfunction in a range of adult clinical subjects. Even more importantly for our present purposes, these studies are increasingly attempting to relate these cognitive deficits to various aspects of pragmatic language function (or dysfunction). The clinical rationale for these studies is clear enough. Developmental models have limited application to the study of acquired impairments of cognition and pragmatics in adults who have previously undergone normal development of these capacities. The autistic child who has failed to develop a theory of other minds, either in whole or in part, is certainly undertaking pragmatic language learning against a background of significant neurocognitive compromise. Yet, this child's neurocognitive status is likely to differ in marked ways from that of the adult who has acquired brain damage and who has extensive experience prior to the onset of injury or disease of the type of mental state attribution that is integral to pragmatic interpretation.