Idiom understanding in people with Asperger syndrome/high functioning autism

Abstract

PURPOSE: To extend previous research in the development of idiom comprehension by investigating this ability in children with Asperger Syndrome (AS) or with High Functioning Autism (HFA). METHODS: Three groups participated in the study. The first group consisted of 27 children with AS/HFA (mean age 11.3 years) and the other two consisted of typically developing children and adults, respectively. The Comprehension Test of Idiomatic Phrases (CTIP) was administered to all participants. RESULTS: Children with AS/HFA had lower performance compared to the other two groups. No difference was found in the performance between the two typically developing groups. Also, there was no significant correlation between the IQ and the performance for the children with AS/HFA, while positive correlations were revealed between performance and age for the two groups of children. CONCLUSION: The results provide further evidence that children with AS/HFA have difficulties in understanding idioms and they confirm their tendency to make literal interpretations. These impairments are irrelevant to their intelligence and they affect their communication with others. The understanding of these difficulties is important in order to find ways to limit the confusion and the misinterpretations which are observed during the communicative acts with this clinic group.

Can You Play with Fire and Not Hurt Yourself? A Comparative Study in Figurative Language Comprehension between Individuals with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Yet, even though participants with autism seem to improve with age in terms of reaction time, suggesting faster processing, they still do not reach the same levels of performance as control matched peers. The improvement with age does not only apply to the individuals with HFA, but also to the control groups, which is consistent with Nippold & Duthie [63], Levorato & Cacciari [64] and Vulchanova et al [8], and our original hypothesis, but not with Vogindroukas & Zikopoulou [26], who, surprisingly, did not find any reliable difference in performance between the younger and older controls.…”

“…For children presentation modality did not affect response literalness, while for the older participants there was an advantage in the auditory modality, suggesting that idiom comprehension most probably resides in mature oral language skills. The results of the participants with autism are also consistent with other research suggesting a tendency for literal (compositional) interpretation in autism [26,72]. …”

“…Thus, the study design might have introduced an additional problem and a potential confound between expression familiarity/frequency and decomposability. In that study, Vogindroukas & Zikopoulou [26] confirm that children with AS/HFA have a tendency to make literal interpretations, but that the difficulty in idiom comprehension is definitely not due to an intellectual deficit.…”

“…Vogindroukas & Zikopoulou [26] conducted a study aimed at the developmental trajectory of idiom comprehension in Asperger’s syndrome (AS) and HFA. The authors compared children with HFA/AS to their typically developing peers and to control adults.…”

Compreensão de expressões idiomáticas no espectro do autismo

“…Crianças que estão em nível escolar, a partir do ensino fundamental, apresentam maior facilidade em interpretar algumas compreensões idiomáticas e estas vão sendo melhor compreendidas de acordo com as fases da vida, como por exemplo na infância e adolescência (Vogindroukas, Zikopoulou, 2011).…”