Advancing English as second language communication: The effectiveness of online pragmatic training on essential speech acts.

The development of pragmatic competence is crucial for enhancing learners' ability to communicate more effectively in English in various cultural and social contexts. Numerous studies have explored the impact of implicit and/or explicit training on language learners' pragmatic development. However, the scarcity of online pragmatic training has motivated this research. To this end, a randomized experimental study was conducted to determine whether online pragmatic treatment could enhance students' pragmatic competence and to identify which procedure, explicit or implicit, is more effective. Sixty university students were randomly assigned to three groups of 20: two experimental groups (implicit and explicit) and one control group. 'Google Meet' was used for online training. All three groups were given a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) as a pre-test featuring 12 different scenarios, three for each of four speech acts. At the end of the treatment, the participants of the experimental and control groups received the same DCT as a post-test. The findings revealed that the participants of the experimental groups improved their pragmatic competence compared to the pre-test and post-test results of the control group. Although there is a difference between the implicit and explicit groups' post-test results, the difference is not statistically significant. Still, according to Cohen's d effect size, the effect size of the explicit group (1.5) is larger than that of the implicit group (1.1). According to the results of the study, it can be said that pragmatic training contributes to the effective use of the target language for communicative purposes.

Divergent social communication between autistic and non-autistic individuals revisited: unraveled via an Integrated Model of Pragmatic Competence.

Some current studies call for the adoption of the theory of the Double Empathy Problem (DEP) to reappraise autistic individuals' problematic social communications with non-autistic individuals from the perspectives of both sides, rather than exclusively focusing on the social cognition of individuals with autism. However, there is no specific proposal that explicates how such reframed social communications proceed. Herein, we adopt two subcomponents of the Integrated Model of Pragmatic Competence (IMPC) to clarify the main factors leading to the divergent social interactions between the two groups. Internal Pragmatic Competence (IPC), revealing how they both independently think about internal linguistic and communicative issues, echoes DEP's reference to different mindsets and elucidates why uncooperative social communications happen. Pragmatic Competence for External Communication (PCEC) explains how the impaired communications among organism-internal submodules and/or their unsuccessful interactions with outside contexts impede the external sociopragmatic communications between the two sides. Put together, the operation of the two components helps to interpret the cognitive pragmatic mechanism underlying social communications and suggests a potential holistic perspective to improve such communications in terms of both sides.

Impact of instruction based on movie and TV series clips on EFL learners' pragmatic competence: Speech acts in focus.

This study attempts to investigate the role of movie and TV series clips in enhancing EFL learners' pragmatic competence by utilizing an experimental design. The sample of the study was 42 students from the English language department at Cihan University-Duhok, Iraq. The experiment lasted one academic semester. The participants' English language proficiency, as determined by an IELTS test sample, was intermediate, and then they were randomly split into two groups, namely experimental and control. Before and after the treatment, a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) served as a pre-and post-test given to the two groups to assess statistically significant differences between them. The experimental group received direct instruction on request and suggestion speech acts via the presentation of the carefully chosen movie and TV series clips. In contrast, the control group was exposed to a minimal amount of pragmatics through printed texts. The findings demonstrated that the experimental group outperformed the control group. More precisely, the findings revealed that movie and TV series clips had a significant influence on learners' production of requests and suggestions. Considering the above findings, the researchers propose EFL teachers apply movie and TV series clips to improve their Students' pragmatic competence in class.

The relationships between students' comprehension of conversational implicatures and their achievement in reading comprehension.

The most important thing in effective communication is understanding not only what is said, but also why it is said. Therefore, the development of pragmatic competence in another language is essential to be able to communicate effectively. Pragmatic competence plays an important role in enabling interlocutors to work out what is intended by what is said. In this sense, special emphasis should be placed on the pragmatic aspects of language in order to enable language learners to use language appropriately. In this regard, this study aims to investigate whether there is a relationship between students' comprehension of conversational implicatures and their achievement in reading comprehension. To this end, the data were collected from first-year 122 students at one of the private universities in northern Cyprus with different bachelor's degrees via the Multiple-Choice Discourse Completion Test (MCDCT) and the reading test. The quantitative data were analysed by means of A Pearson Correlational Analysis, Simple Linear Regression, and Canonical Correlational Analysis. The results of the study revealed that comprehension of conversational implicatures of first-year university students is positively related to their achievement in reading comprehension. Moreover, it has been depicted that among the eight implicature types, topic change, indirect refusal, and disclosure are more related (0.855) to reading comprehension. Therefore, these three implicature types provide the most contribution to the participants' comprehension of conversational implicatures. As it is, they are more powerful predictors of reading comprehension. In addition to these results, there is only one high positive correlation among the six reading subskills; that is between the subskill to identify ideas and opinions of the writer and the subskill to scan a text to find specific information (0.749). In the light of the findings, this study yields crucial implications for language teachers, material developers, and curriculum designers to take full advantage of these associations for promoting EFL learners' achievement in reading and comprehension of conversational implicatures in the target language.

Pragmatic Language Development: Analysis of Mapping Knowledge Domains on How Infants and Children Become Pragmatically Competent.

New-borns are capable of recognising and producing sounds as they become phonologically competent. Following this, infants develop a system for connecting these sounds, which helps them become increasingly lexically competent over time. Their knowledge of these words grows as they develop, using words to form phrases, turning them into sentences, and ultimately becoming syntactically competent. By making sense of these linguistic elements, these three competencies are enhanced, and this is how infants become semantically competent. As infants continue to develop linguistic and non-linguistic communication behaviours, this miraculous language development becomes even more complex, enabling them to perfect their linguistic abilities while being pragmatically competent. In this study, a scientometric approach was used to examine past, present, and future trends in pragmatic language development (PLD). A total of 6455 documents were analysed from the Scopus, WOS, and Lens databases between 1950 and 2022. The analysis involved the visualisation and tabulation of eight bibliometric and eight scientometric indicators using CiteSpace 5.8.R3 and VOSviewer 1.6.18 software for data analysis. In this study, we highlight the major patterns and topics directing the research on PLD between 1950 and 2022. The themes and topics included (1) analysing PLD as a social behaviour through the lens of executive functions; (2) studying PLD as a social behaviour based on social understanding; (3) examining PLD as a social behaviour associated with autism spectrum disorder; (4) developing an understanding of PLD in academic settings through the examination of executive functions; (5) identifying pragmatic competence versus communicative competence as a social behaviour; (6) analysing pragmatic language skills in aphasic patients via epistemic stances (i.e., attitudes towards knowledge in interaction); (7) investigating PLD as a behavioural problem in the context of a foreign language; (8) assessing PLD as a behavioural problem in individuals with autism spectrum disorder; (9) assessing PLD in persons with traumatic brain injury and closed head injury as a behavioural problem; (10) identifying the role of the right hemisphere in executive functions as a cognitive substrate; (11) assessing the impact of pragmatic failure in speech acts on pragmatic competence; and (12) investigating the patterns of PLD among learning-disabled children.

Revisiting L2 pragmatic competence through implicit vs. explicit instructional framework.

Successful interaction in the target language requires L2 learners to use and understand the grammatically correct language. At the same time, the language used is expected to produce socioculturally appropriate utterances that it refers to their Pragmatic competence. The latter entails acquiring pragmatic competence, which has proved to be very challenging for L2 learners. This is because they gain limited exposure to the use of language for real communication in an authentic social setting. Moreover, instruction has been found to influence the functional abilities in L2 as it equips the learners with the ability to produce and comprehend L2 in different situations. Focusing on the research conducted on the role of explicit and implicit instruction on L2 pragmatic competence, this study aimed to give a summative description of the empirical studies carried out on teaching pragmatics. The investigation ends up with a conclusion, instructional implications, and suggestions for future research.

The Role of Social and Emotional Adjustment in Mediating the Relationship Between Early Experiences and Different Language Outcomes.

Background: Studies have highlighted the relationship between early childhood experiences and later language and communication skills on the one hand and social and emotional adjustment on the other. Less is known about this relationship between different types of early experiences and their relationship to different communication skills over time. Equally important is the extent to which the child's behaviour is related to later outcomes affecting the relationship between the child's environment and aspects of their communication development. Method: Drawing on data from 5,000 children in Growing Up in Scotland, a representative sample of children born in 2003. This paper looks are the differential relationships between home learning environment (HLE) (reads books/storeys, engages in painting or drawing, reads nursery rhymes and teaches letter/shapes and parental mental health (PMH) (Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) in the first year of life and both structural language skills ("Listening Comprehension" and "Expressive Vocabulary" subtests of The Wechsler Individual Achievement Tests) and pragmatic competence (The Children's Communication Checklist) at 11 years and explores the extent to which they are mediated by social and emotional adjustment at school entry. Results: PMH was associated with pragmatics but not listening comprehension or vocabulary. By contrast HLE was associated with all three measures of communication. In the final mediated model social and emotional adjustment mediated the relationship between PMH and all three measures of communication. The mediation was statistically significant for the relationship between HLE and both pragmatics and listening comprehension but not for expressive vocabulary. The results are discussed in terms of the relationships concerned and what they tell us about the potential for targeted early interventions. Conclusions: The mediating role of socio-emotional adjustment at school entry points to the need for careful monitoring of children's social and emotional development in primary and middle childhood. Services and policy aimed at improving child outcomes through improving home learning environments must work hand in hand with those responsible for offering support for the mental health, social-emotional adjustment and wellbeing of parents and children from birth and into the school years.

¿El entrenamiento en lectura de creencias puede influir sobre la competencia pragmática?: un estudio sobre las relaciones de estas capacidades cognitivas en la infancia / Can belief- reading training influence pragmatic competence? A study on the relationships of these cognitive abilities in childhood

Resumen Con el objetivo de indagar respecto a la influencia de la lectura de creencias sobre la competencia pragmática, en el presente estudio 56 niños de entre 48 y 54 meses pertenecientes al programa Buen Comienzo de la ciudad de Medellín participaron en un diseño experimental pre-post con grupo control. Para la evaluación de la lectura de creencias se adaptaron al español cuatro pruebas de la escala de Wellman y Liu (2004), mientras que para evaluar la competencia pragmática se adaptaron cuatro situaciones comunicativas propuestas por Sacco et al. (2008). Para la manipulación de la variable se llevaron a cabo 10 sesiones de entrenamiento en lectura de creencias. De acuerdo con los resultados intragrupo, el programa de entrenamiento fue efectivo para mejorar la variable entrenada, pues el grupo experimental mejoró su desempeño en la lectura de creencias (p = .007; d = -.663) y en la competencia pragmática (p = .007; d = .648); no obstante, aunque se encontraron diferencias significativas entre el grupo experimental y el grupo control para la lectura de creencias (p = .001; d = .472), no fue así para el desempeño en la competencia pragmática (p = .340; d = .143). A la luz de estos resultados, no es posible asegurar una relación de influencia de la lectura de creencias sobre la competencia pragmática; sin embargo, se encontró un modelo de regresión lineal satisfactorio cuando se incluyeron en los análisis variables sociodemográficas. Al final del artículo se discute respecto a la necesidad de integrar variables de contexto cuando se indaga por una posible relación de influencia de una variable psicológica sobre otra.

Abstract In order to investigate the influence of belief-reading on pragmatic competence, 56 children between 48 and 54 months old, belonging to the program Buen Comienzo [Good Start] in the city of Medellin, participated in a pre-post experimental design with a control group. For the evaluation of belief-reading, four tests of the Wellman and Liu (2004) Scale were adapted to Spanish; while for the evaluation of pragmatic competence, four communicative situations proposed by Sacco et., al. (2008) were adapted. For the manipulation of the variable, 10 training sessions in belief-reading were carried out. According to the intragroup results, the training program was effective in improving the trained variable, as the experimental group improved its performance in belief reading (p=,007; d= -,663) and pragmatic competence (p=,007; d=,648). However, although significant differences were found between the experimental group and the control group for belief reading (p=,001; d=,472), this was not the case for performance in pragmatic competence (p=,340; d=,143). In light of these results, it is not possible to ensure a relationship of influence of belief reading on pragmatic competence. Nevertheless, a satisfactory linear regression model was found when sociodemographic variables were included in the analyzes. The need to integrate context variables when inquiring about a possible relationship of influence of one psychological variable on another is discussed.

Cognitive Processes of ESL Learners in Pragmatic Role-Play Tasks in Academic Settings.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the cognitive processes of English as second language (L2) learners that are involved in their task-based pragmatic performances in academic settings. This study, therefore, examined the cognitive processes of 30 English L2 learners when engaging in various role-play-based pragmatic performances, such as requesting a recommendation letter from a professor and negotiating an agreeable meeting time with classmates. The qualitative analyses of the retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) data of the participants indicated that the learners employed a series of cognitive, metacognitive, and pragmatic strategies when accomplishing various speech acts (e.g., requests and refusals). This study hoped to make two new contributions to the field. First, the study provided empirical evidence to validate the theoretical taxonomy of the strategy use of learners in L2 pragmatics. Additionally, the theoretical foundations of current research on cognitive processes are primarily informed by pragmatic theories. Thus, the study aims to explicate a more comprehensive view of the cognitive processes of L2 learners in pragmatic performances by employing the theories from both pragmatic and learner strategy perspectives.

Investigation of L2/Ln Pragmatic Competence: Its Core and Route Map.

How to use language properly and acquire the capacity for language use has become the focus of linguists and philosophers for centuries. Therefore, pragmatic competence underlying language use arouses enormous interests of language acquisition practitioners. This study reveals the core properties of various models or theories of pragmatic competence, such as the communicative componential models, the form-function mapping proposal of the functionalist, the tripartite cognitive model, and the current integrated model of pragmatic competence. The common core includes (but not limited to) integration of thought and communication, one uniform pragmatic mechanism, dynamic form-function mapping, and complementarity between grammatical and pragmatic competences. With the findings as a departure, a brief outline for further investigation of pragmatic competence is proposed finally, including pathological and neurobiological examination of pragmatic competence.

Theory of Mind Profiles in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Adaptive/Social Skills and Pragmatic Competence.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is one of the most relevant concepts in the field of social cognition, particularly in the case of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Literature showing that individuals with ASD display deficits in ToM is extensive and robust. However, some related issues deserve more research: the heterogeneous profile of ToM abilities in children with ASD and the association between different levels of ToM development and social, pragmatic, and adaptive behaviors in everyday life. The first objective of this study was to identify profiles of children with ASD without intellectual disability (ID), based on explicit and applied ToM knowledge, and compare these profiles with a group of children with typical development (TD). A second objective was to determine differences in symptom severity, adaptive/social behavior, and pragmatic abilities between the profiles identified. Fifty-two children with a clinical diagnosis of ASD without ID and 37 children with TD performed neuropsychological ToM tasks and two vocabulary and memory tests. In addition, all of their mothers completed different questionnaires about applied ToM abilities, severity of ASD symptoms, adaptive/social skills, and pragmatic competence. Two subgroups were identified in the cluster analysis carried out with explicit and applied ToM indicators. The "Lower ToM abilities" profile obtained significantly lower scores than the "Higher ToM abilities" profile on all the ToM measures. Furthermore, the analysis of covariance, controlling for vocabulary and working memory (ANCOVAs), showed statistically significant differences in applied ToM abilities between the two groups of children with ASD without ID and the group with TD. However, only the group with "Higher ToM abilities" achieved similar performance to the TD group on the verbal task of explicit ToM knowledge. Finally, the "Lower ToM abilities" cluster obtained significantly higher scores on autism symptoms (social and communication domains) and lower scores on adaptive behavior and pragmatic skills than the cluster with "Higher ToM abilities." Taken together, these findings have implications for understanding the heterogeneity in ToM skills in children with ASD without ID, and their differential impact on social, communicative, and adaptive behaviors.

Apologies in Arabic and English: A Cross-Cultural Study.

This study examines the apology strategies found in the speech of well-educated native Ammani Arabic speakers (Jordanian Arabic speakers) and native Mancunian English speakers (British English speakers). The study also attempts to examine Brown and Levinson's view which assumes that strategies of politeness are universal across all cultures. A discourse completion test containing a variety of scenarios requiring an apology of varying degrees of severity is administered to a sample of sixty participants, divided equally between Ammanis and Mancunians. The study shows that there are no significant differences between the two groups of participants due to culture except in two strategies, namely, concern for hearer and taking on responsibility (explicit self-blame). The British Mancunians significantly outperformed Jordanian Arabic speakers in their use of these strategies, indicating that Mancunians had more preference for using these strategies than Jordanian Arabic speakers. The study concludes with some implications for EFL teachers and syllabus designers.

Children's Comprehension of Irony: Studies on Polish-Speaking Preschoolers.

We explored the topic of irony comprehension by preschoolers. Two hundred and thirty-one children (77 four-year-olds, 89 five-year-olds, and 65 six-year-olds) were tested with the Irony Comprehension Task (ICT, Banasik and Bokus, in: Poster presented at the psycholinguistics conference in Flanders, Berg en Dal, 2012). Participants were asked questions checking comprehension of the intended meaning behind an ironic comment. Four conditions were used for the ironic utterances: targeted (ironic comment was a reference to the addressee's behavior), non-targeted (ironic comment was not a reference to the addressee's behavior), with symmetric dyads (a child said the ironic comment to another child), and asymmetric dyads (an adult said the ironic comment to a child). All groups achieved high irony comprehension scores. The results show a significant difference in accuracy between the 4-year-olds and the 6-year-olds only. The youngest group more accurately understood ironic utterances that referred to the addressee's action than those that did not, while older children did not show these differences. The aspect of who is speaking to whom was also significant only for the youngest children. These results provide important new insights into factors potentially influencing figurative language comprehension. Components such as participant structure and irony type require acknowledgement in the discussion on irony difficulty.

Contribution of Theory of Mind, Executive Functioning, and Pragmatics to Socialization Behaviors of Children with High-Functioning Autism.

Social difficulties are a key aspect of autism, but the intervening factors are still poorly understood. This study had two objectives: to compare the profile of ToM skills, executive functioning (EF), and pragmatic competence (PC) of children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and children with typical development (TD), and analyze their mediator role in social functioning. The participants were 52 children with HFA and 37 children with TD matched on age, intelligence quotient, and expressive vocabulary. Significant differences were found on measures of ToM, both explicit and applied, EF, and PC between children with HFA and TD. Multiple mediation analysis revealed that applied ToM skills and PC mediated the relations between autism symptoms and social functioning. Implications for social cognitive interventions to address these findings are discussed.

Cognitive impairment and pragmatics.

BACKGROUND: One of the most important ingredients of felicitous conversation exchanges is the adequate expression of illocutionary force and the achievement of perlocutionary effects, which can be considered essential to the functioning of pragmatic competence. FINDINGS: The breakdown of illocutionary and perlocutionary functions is one of the most prominent external features of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's Disease, with devastating psychological and social consequences for patients, their family and caregivers. CONCLUSIONS: The study of pragmatic functions is essential for a proper understanding of the linguistic and communicative aspects of Alzheimer's disease.

Competencia pragmática y adaptación psicosocial en niños sujetos a medidas de protección infantil / Pragmatic competence and psychosocial adaptation in children in protective care

The family, as the basic social environment, should attend to the affective and educational needs of the child. The family should be a stable and secure place for people to live together, where the child should receive care, protection, respect and social support. The family provides the environment for the child to develop and for the parents to adjust and readjust their expectations and practices concerning each child and each different circumstance within a continuity and style. The role of the family is not simply to satisfy the basic, fundamental needs, but to facilitate an interaction between the processes of physiological maturing and daily experiences in order to achieve the child's biopsychological plenitude. When the educational style is not the appropriate one, there are likely to be psychological problems in childhood and adolescence. Some experiences the child is exposed to can be the cause of maladjusted reactions. Such maladjusted response may vary according to the intensity of the experience, the meaning it has for the child, the developmental moment in which he/she finds him/herself (the degree of maturity) and the circumstances following the event. The attachment consolidates through the interaction between the child and the people around him/her. When children are exposed to aggression and rejection from their parents or when they are not given the affection and support that they need, they are more likely to develop emotional and behavioural problems. The communicative interaction established between the child and the important adults in his/her environment is essential for language developmental acquisition. Language accompanies us in almost all the activities we participate in. The absence of stimulation in the first years, so frequent in abused children, can result in delays in the acquisition and development of language. A great part of a child's activity in the first years of life is social and communicative. Although the early interaction between parents and children does not generate language understood as syntactical, phonological or semantic rules, it is essential as it provides the child with the necessary instruments to pass on to formal language. In the disorganised form of attachment, the most usual in cases of abuse, that sensitivity towards the child's needs is distorted, so the interaction with the child does not lead to a correct attribution of the intentional and communicative meaning of the child's action. The interaction in the family environment is essential as it reinforces and redirects the spontaneous use the child makes of language, progressively leading her/him to its correct use. The child learns to refer to the same things and in the same way as others do. Yet the use of language implies the consideration of the other as a thinking being, with beliefs and intentions that should be taken into account in order to be able to establish communication and the form it should take. Several papers researching this issue have stressed the effects of child abuse and neglect on language development. This research analyses pragmatic competence and psychosocial adaptation in children in protective care. Most of the studies do not provide data concerning how each individual linguistic component is affected in such children. Important deficiencies in language development are pointed out, but nothing is said in detail about where exactly such difficulties lie. The pragmatic function determines what type of language must be used in a certain context. This underlines the importance of such psycholinguistic skill. The child, beside learning the formal aspects of the language, learns to use them in a social context. The use of language implies something more than the form or the meaning. It also involves our desires, intentions, beliefs, decisions, to plan the action, etc. Our methodological proposal was carried out within the framework of the Child Care Centres in the Region of Extremadura (Spain). The sample is made up of 74 children living in four different Centres. There were 41 boys and 33 girls between the ages of 6 and 18. We feel we should point out, as strength of the research, the fact that the sample analysed represents the total number of children in residential care over the age of 6 at the time of the evaluation. Pragmatics determines what type of language should be used in a particular context. Children, apart from learning the formal aspects of the language, learn to use it in a social context. Thus there is a difference between the literal meaning of a phrase and its intention. It is necessary for the listener to recognise the speaker's intention over and above the literal meaning of what is said. To achieve this, children must be able to adapt the linguistic forms to the communicative act. We must draw attention to such important aspects as intentionality in communication and the context in which the children's language is developed. In a conversation, the children should be able to manage such skills as: taking turns to speak, expressing intention and recognising the intentions of others, attracting the other's attention, offering an appropriate amount of information, replying in an adequate way with relevant information, adopting the speaker's point of view, the capacity to modify their discourse according to the situation, etc. Our research shows that children in protective care have difficulties in knowing how people they are speaking to will react, especially when it comes to adults. They have clear limitations when using language as a resource to adequately demand attention, so that the person whose attention is required actually does so. They are also limited when directly or indirectly demanding action (the adequate formulation of a specific demand or suggestion); when making a request, especially in those situations in which a request has to be made to an important adult or figure of affection, they often have trouble maintaining continuity in discourse, jumping from one subject to another.

La presente investigación analiza la competencia pragmática y su relación con el grado de adaptación personal, social y escolar en niños sujetos a medidas de protección infantil. La interacción comunicativa que se establece entre el niño y los adultos significativos de su entorno es esencial para el aprendizaje del lenguaje. El lenguaje nos acompaña en casi todas las actividades que realizamos. La ausencia de estimulación en los primeros años, tan frecuente en los niños maltratados, puede desembocar en retrasos en la adquisición y desarrollo del lenguaje. Diferentes investigaciones ponen de manifiesto los efectos del maltrato infantil en el desarrollo lingüístico. El estilo comunicativo desempeña un papel determinante en algunas formas de maltrato. Éste es el caso del maltrato y abandono emocional, donde los intercambios afectivos y comunicativos entre el adulto y el niño son muy disfuncionales. La investigación se desarrolla en los Centros de Acogida de Menores de la región de Extremadura (España). La muestra se compone de 74 niños. De ellos, 41 son varones y 33 mujeres, de edades comprendidas entre los seis y los 18 años. La muestra analizada representa el número total de niños en situación de acogimiento residencial, de edades superiores a los seis años. El estudio evidencia que el nivel de dominio pragmático de los niños en situación de acogimiento residencial se encuentra afectado. El dominio de la pragmática implica un uso adecuado de los distintos tipos de enunciados en situaciones comunicativas concretas. Para ello, el niño debe tener la capacidad de comunicarse e interaccionar utilizando el lenguaje para diferentes funciones (pedir información, reclamar la atención del otro, saludar, protestar, etc.). Al analizar los resultados de la investigación, se evidencian dificultades pragmáticas para formular demandas de información específicas; responder cuando el enunciado les resulta demasiado extenso y emplear el lenguaje como recurso para reclamar la atención de forma adecuada, así como en los requerimientos directos e indirectos de acción. Los niños tienen dificultad para ponerse en el lugar del interlocutor, especialmente si se trata de un adulto; para hacer un ruego o petición, sobre todo cuando se trata de los padres u otro adulto; les cuesta mantener una continuidad en el discurso, saltando de un tema a otro; para solicitar más información o aclaraciones sobre algún acontecimiento; escasa habilidad para mostrar desacuerdos ante una figura de autoridad (padres o profesor); y muestran limitaciones para requerir una acción ya sea a través de órdenes o sugerencias. A través de la investigación comprobamos que las dificultades lingüísticas en niños con medidas de protección pueden adoptar formas muy diversas, destacando las dificultades para el uso del lenguaje como medio para dirigir la acción (función autorreguladora). Asimismo, los niños presentan inadaptación personal y social en varios de los factores analizados. Los niños manifiestan desajuste disociativo, pensamientos negativos y mecanismos de huida de la realidad (ensoñación, autoconcepto negativo e infravaloración de sí mismos). En cuanto a la inadaptación escolar, se evidencia falta de motivación, laboriosidad e interés por el aprendizaje, inadaptación escolar externa, indisciplina y aversión al profesor e insatisfacción escolar. Debemos tomar con precaución los resultados, ya que además de la situación de desprotección común a todos estos niños, es preciso tener en cuenta el factor sociocultural. El lenguaje se desarrolla en interacción con el medio social en que vivimos, y hay contextos familiares que ofrecen una mayor riqueza que otros. La pertenencia a familias de bajo nivel cultural puede dificultar el desarrollo lingüístico porque los niños oyen un lenguaje poco correcto y muy concreto. Esperamos que la presente investigación sirva para alentar el estudio de este fenómeno en mayor profundidad. Debemos destacar la complejidad intrínseca de esta medida de protección, en la que entran en juego múltiples factores pertenecientes a diferentes sistemas (familia biológica, niño, centro de acogida y profesionales), siendo extremadamente difícil dilucidar qué factores intervienen de forma significativa en la explicación de la adaptación y el bienestar de los niños acogidos.