Fluent language with impaired pragmatics in children with Williams syndrome Kosuke Asada a, * , Kiyotaka Tomiwa b, c , Masako Okada c , Shoji Itakura a a Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan b Genetic Counselling and Clinical Research Unit, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Yoshida-konoecho, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan c Osaka City General Hospital, 2-13-22, Miyakojima-hondori, Miyakojima, Osaka 534-0021, Japan article info Article history: Received 29 July 2009 Received in revised form 31 March 2010 Accepted 3 April 2010 Keywords: Children Communication repair Pragmatics Verbal communication Williams syndrome abstract We investigated the pragmatic language abilities of children with Williams syndrome (WS) and typically developing (TD) controls in an object-choice situation. After the children chose the object, the experimenter verbally expressed his understanding or misunder- standing of the choice and then gave the children the desired or undesired object. Children with WS produced fewer verbalizations for clarification than did TD children, particularly when they were verbally misunderstood, although children with WS generally talked almost as much as the TD children. This implies that chil- dren with WS may show impairment in communication repair skills for sharing what they meant with others. Such impairment might be related to the difficulties with relevant communication (i. e., influencing others’ mental states with as little effort as possible) that are found in children with WS. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 1.1. Communicative characteristics of Williams syndrome Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorder caused by the micro- deletion of chromosome 7q11.23 (Ewart et al., 1993). WS has been characterized by an uneven cognitive profile, with relatively strong language abilities but weak visuo-spatial cognition (Bellugi, Lichtenberger, Jones, Lai, & St. George, 2000; Mervis, Morris, Bertrand, & Robinson, 1999; Udwin, * Corresponding author. Tel./fax: þ81 75 753 2731. E-mail address: kousuke@ka1.mbox.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp (K. Asada). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Neurolinguistics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ jneuroling 0911-6044/$ – see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.04.001 Journal of Neurolinguistics 23 (2010) 540–552