Figurative language processing in autism spectrum disorders: A review

Abstract

Impairments in the broader domain of pragmatics are considered to be a defining feature of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A challenging aspect of pragmatic competence is the ability to process nonliteral language. Interestingly, previous studies in figurative language comprehension in ASD have demonstrated conflicting results regarding participants' performance. The main scientific debate focuses on the underlying skills which facilitate processing of nonliteral speech in ASD. Namely, Theory of Mind (ToM), language abilities and Executive functions (EFs) are regarded as factors affecting autistic individuals' performance. This review addresses figurative language comprehension in ASD in light of the above three interpretive accounts. We reviewed data from recent studies in this field concluding that autistic children indeed encounter systematic difficulties in the processing of non‐literal language. Moreover, only ToM and verbal skills were found to correlate the most with figurative language comprehension in ASD. Notably, we found that differences related to research methodology and tasks' properties may have led to discrepancies between studies' results. Finally, we argue that future studies should encompass in their experimental design figurative comprehension tasks with minimal linguistic demands and also measures of ToM, verbal ability and EFs in order to shed more light in the independent contribution of those skills to the processing of nonliteral language in ASD.

Insights into Oral and Written Competencies in Neurodevelopmental Disorders

“…Figurative language, in its multiple forms (metaphor, metonymy, idioms, irony, etc.) entirely relies on nonliteral meanings, and children's capability to go beyond literal interpretations is a developmental process that has been extensively studied over the past six decades [23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. In this Special Issue, the article by Fanari, Melogno, and Fadda (University of Cagliari, "Sapienza"-University of Rome-Italy) (Contribution 6) addresses one of these forms, namely sarcasm, and describes two studies on school-age children's comprehension of sarcastic expressions.…”

Reading comprehension differences between children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and low cognitive abilities and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and intact cognitive skills: the roles of decoding, fluency and morphosyntax

“…Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition marked by challenges in various domains ranging from children’s social and communication skills to their cognitive and language abilities. Especially language ability varies widely for children with ASD ( Tager-Flusberg et al, 2005 ; Peristeri et al, 2017 ; Andreou et al, 2020 ) with pragmatic language difficulties (i.e., language use in context) being a hallmark feature even for high-functioning children whose IQ lies in the average range ( Baron-Cohen, 1988 ; Peppé et al, 2006 ; Lam and Yeung, 2012 ; Andreou and Skrimpa, 2020 ; Peristeri and Tsimpli, 2022 ; Lampri et al, 2023 ). Among verbally-able children with ASD, language difficulties have been reported to have a cascading negative effect on children’s academic success leading to underachievement as compared to typically-developing (TD) peers.…”