A study of pragmatic skills of clutterers and normal speakers

In communication dyads, three junior high clutterers interacted verbally with three matched control subjects in a task that required one member of the dyad to explain a complicated route (from a marked map of a town center) to the other (who had an unmarked map.) Members played both roles in the dyads. These six subjects were compared with one group of normally speaking control subjects carrying out the same task. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate that, compared with normal speaking pupils, clutterers frequently manifested pragmatic errors and communication failures.