Communication and Psychosocial Functioning in Children With Tourette Syndrome: Parent‐Reported Measures

What is already known on this subject There is evidence that communication challenges are relatively common in children with TS; however, we have little information about what these challenges look like and what other factors relate to them. What this study adds This study demonstrated underdiagnosis of language and communication difficulties in TS, given the discrepancy between communication challenges suggested by CCC-2 results and the number of children who had previously received a communication diagnosis. Moreover, parent-reported challenges were observed for both social communication and general communication. This is the first study to report a correlation between psychosocial functioning and communication skills in children with TS. What are the clinical implications of this study? Children with TS should be referred for speech-language pathology services if challenges are indicated and attention should be placed on evaluating aspects of social-pragmatic language while promoting acceptance of social differences that are not interfering with functional communication.