Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders Do Not Use Social Stereotypes in Irony Comprehension

Abstract

Social and communication impairments are part of the essential diagnostic criteria used to define Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). Difficulties in appreciating non-literal speech, such as irony in ASDs have been explained as due to impairments in social understanding and in recognizing the speaker’s communicative intention. It has been shown that social-interactional factors, such as a listener’s beliefs about the speaker’s attitudinal propensities (e.g., a tendency to use sarcasm, to be mocking, less sincere and more prone to criticism), as conveyed by an occupational stereotype, do influence a listener’s interpretation of potentially ironic remarks. We investigate the effect of occupational stereotype on irony detection in adults with High Functioning Autism or Asperger Syndrome (HFA/AS) and a comparison group of typically developed adults. We used a series of verbally presented stories containing ironic or literal utterances produced by a speaker having either a “sarcastic” or a “non-sarcastic” occupation. Although individuals with HFA/AS were able to recognize ironic intent and occupational stereotypes when the latter are made salient, stereotype information enhanced irony detection and modulated its social meaning (i.e., mockery and politeness) only in comparison participants. We concluded that when stereotype knowledge is not made salient, it does not automatically affect pragmatic communicative processes in individuals with HFA/AS.

Cognitive profile in adults with Asperger syndrome using WAIS-IV: Comparison to typical adults

“…However, comparison of people with AS to a control group, typically developed, remains unusual. Most of researches using WAIS-R (Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1997Pijnacker, Hagoort, Buitelaar, Teunisse, & Geurts, 2009) or WAIS-III / WISC-III (de Boer et al, 2014;Sahyoun, Soulières, Belliveau, Mottron, & Mody, 2009;Spek, Scholte, & Van Berckelaer-Onnes, 2010;Zalla et al, 2014) failed to differentiate an AS group from a control group of adults. Only one study based on the new version of Wechsler scale 4th edition (Wechsler, 2008) provided additional information about cognitive profile of AS adults compared to a control group (Holdnack, Goldstein, & Drozdick, 2011).…”

Addressing the Challenge of Verbal Irony: Getting Serious about Sarcasm Training

“…Research has also shown that irony is more likely to be detected when the comprehender has insight about the speaker's attitude; this can be cued in many ways, for instance, by knowledge of the speaker's occupation (e.g., comedian vs. scientist, Katz and Pexman 1997;Pexman and Olineck 2002b), or by knowledge that there is a close relationship between speaker and target (Kreuz and Link 2002;Pexman and Zvaigzne 2004;Slugoski and Turnbull 1988). In a recent study Zalla et al (2014) showed that although adults with a diagnosis of ASD had knowledge of speaker occupation stereotypes, they did not use that knowledge in order to modify their perceptions of irony, whereas for comparison participants without a diagnosis of ASD, stereotype information enhanced irony detection. In addition, irony is detected and processed more readily by individuals who tend to use irony more frequently in their own speech (Ivanko et al 2004).…”

Estudos empíricos da ironia: revisão sistemática e implicações para uma análise funcional

“…Em estudos como os de Stratta et al (2007), Mo et al (2008), Amenta et al (2013), Zalla et al (2014) e Rapp et al (2014), em que os participantes eram adultos/crianças com diagnóstico de transtorno psicológico (i.e., tea, Esquizofrenia), as conclusões foram que a compreensão da ironia era reduzida. Apesar de fazerem parte da comunidade verbal do irônico ou terem intimidade com ele, os portadores desses transtornos pareceram estar psicobiologicamente limitados ou impedidos de compreender a ironia.…”