Purpose: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) frequently face pragmatic impairments which may result in learning, socialization, and mental health difficulties, therefore early intervention is crucial. In Portugal, the Pragmatic Intervention Programme (PICP) has been recently developed and validated, but its effects are unknown. This study aims to determine the effects of the PICP on preschool-age children with ASD or DLD with pragmatic impairments. Methods: A non-randomized controlled trial has been conducted. The children (n = 20) were assigned to the intervention (n = 11) or the control group (waiting list) (n = 9). Each child attended 24 PICP-based intervention sessions provided by a Speech and Language Therapist in kindergarten. The primary outcome measure was a Goal Attainment Scale (GAS) rated by parents and kindergarten teachers. Secondary outcomes include parent/teacher-reported communication skills (Escala de Avaliação de Competências Comunicativas) and an assessment of the child’s general language ability (Teste de Linguagem—Avaliação da Linguagem Pré-Escolar). Results: GAS results show that all the children in the intervention group made progress. Statistically significant differences between pre- and post-intervention assessments were found for all secondary outcomes. Conclusions: The main findings suggest that the PICP improves language in preschool-age children with ASD and DLD with pragmatic difficulties. Further research is needed to analyse the effects of the PICP for each neurodevelopmental disorder individually. These results are crucial and will contribute to future research and evidence-based practice.

Rhotic clusters are complex structures segmentally and prosodically and are frequently one of the last structures acquired by Portuguese-speaking children. This paper describes cross-sectional data for word-initial (WI) rhotic tap clusters in typically developing 3-4- and 5-year-olds in Portugal. Additional information is provided on WI /l/ as a singleton and in clusters. A native speaker audio-recorded and transcribed single words in a story-telling task. Results for WI rhotic clusters show an age effect consistent with previous research on European Portuguese. Singleton /l/ was in advance of /l/-clusters as expected, but the tap clusters were in advance of the /l/-clusters, possibly reflecting the velarized characteristics of the lateral. The prosodic variables word stress and word length were relevant for the WI rhotic clusters: shorter words and stressed syllables showed higher accuracy. Finally, mismatches (errors') mainly reflected negative structural constraints (deletion of C2 and epenthesis) rather than segmental constraints (substitutions).

^{1 1} Abstract is also available in European Portuguese. As a contribution to a special issue with individual profiles in protracted phonological development (PPD), we present a European Portuguese-speaking six-year-old, “Vicente”. By age six years, Portuguese-learning children have generally mastered most of the phonology. However, Vicente showed severe persisting PPD, which was negatively impacting his general socialisation. Although word length and stress often matched the adult targets as did many consonants and vowels, consonants were restricted in distribution and sequences. Consonant clusters showed a particularly high proportion of reduction. A constraints-based nonlinear phonological analysis led to a proposed intervention plan to address needs across the phonological hierarchy in the context of his greater need for enhanced socialisation: starting with the more attainable new word positions and sequences for consonants in his inventory, before addressing a major need for new word structure (clusters) and minor needs for segmental development (additional coronals).

O estatuto da lateral /l/ em português europeu (PE), bem como a forma como este segmento é adquirido pelas crianças portuguesas, tem sido assunto de interesse para investigadores e clínicos, nos últimos tempos. Este trabalho tem como principais objetivos apresentar dados de produção infantil extraídos do corpus Ramalho-EP (taxas de sucesso e estratégias de reconstrução mais produtivas) e refletir, à luz da teoria fonológica e de dados de aquisição já disponíveis para o PE, sobre as várias propostas teóricas para a representação de /l/ neste sistema. Os resultados registam aquisição dependente da complexidade da estrutura silábica (foi registada a tendência de aquisição Ataque simples >> Coda >> Ataque ramificado), embora /l/ não se encontre adquirido em nenhum dos constituintes silábicos, registando-se taxas de acerto inferiores a 76%. As produções preferenciais [w, ʋ] para o alvo /l/ são interpretadas como um indicador do processamento da lateral alveolar como [+contínuo], tal como proposto por Mateus e Andrade (2000) e contra Amorim e Veloso (2021). Paralelamente, estas variantes e a aquisição tardia de /l/ argumentam empiricamente a favor do traço [+aproximante] para a representação fonológica da lateral em PE, que substitui [+lateral] na proposta de Amorim e Veloso (2021).

Background/Objectives: To date, there are no validated tools that assess children’s performance in connected text dictation tasks in European Portuguese using automated analysis. International studies were identified, but these primarily involved word dictation tasks and did not use automatic scoring tools. The present study aims to assess the reliability of the Dita.te (internal consistency and inter-rater reliability), a written assessment test based on a dictation task with automatic spreadsheet analysis, and establish normative data for text dictation tasks for children from 3rd to 6th grade. Methods: This study included 315 European Portuguese-speaking children from the 3rd to 6th grades. The Dita.te tool was used to assess orthographic errors based on phonological, morphological, and prosodic criteria. Descriptive statistics, percentiles, the inter-rater reliability and internal consistency were analyzed. Non-parametric tests compared performance by gender and school year due to a non-normal data distribution. Results: The Dita.te had excellent internal consistency (α = 0.929). The correlation between items scored highly (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient = 0.925). The number of errors decreased as the school year progressed, with errors affecting the syllable nucleus being the most frequent across all school years. These were followed by orthographic substitution errors, with grapheme omission being the most prevalent. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that orthographic competence is mostly stable before the 3rd grade, and the mismatches found in children with typical development show residual error in their orthographic performance.

The presence of pragmatic language difficulties can be lifelong for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental language disorder (DLD). Implementing evidence-based practices integrates the best research evidence, the clinical expertise of the professionals delivering the intervention and the perspectives of parents/caregivers. Nevertheless, research on parents’ and early childhood educators’ perspectives on the perceived effectiveness of pragmatic language interventions is scarce. This study aims to analyse parents’ and early childhood educators’ perceptions after the implementation of the Pragmatic Intervention Programme (PICP) to preschool-age children with ASD and children with DLD. As a part of a broad research project, a survey was conducted using an adaptation of a satisfaction survey. Data from 72 participants among parents ( n = 36) and early childhood educators ( n = 36) were collected immediately after the implementation of the PICP. The survey includes 11 statements, individually scored between 1 ( totally disagree ) and 7 ( totally agree ). The average score obtained from the parents’ perspective about the intervention impact was 6.83 ± 0.29. For early childhood educators, the average score was 6.60 ± 0.49. The results indicate that parents and early childhood educators considered this intervention appropriate and effective for improving the pragmatic language skills of preschool-age children with ASD and DLD.