Neural-level associations of non-verbal pragmatic comprehension in young Finnish autistic adults

Abstract

This video-based study examines the pragmatic non-verbal comprehension skills and corresponding neural-level findings in young Finnish autistic adults, and controls. Items from the Assessment Battery of Communication (ABaCo) were chosen to evaluate the comprehension of non-verbal communication. Inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis of the functional magnetic resonance imaging data was used to reveal the synchrony of brain activation across participants during the viewing of pragmatically complex scenes of ABaCo videos. The results showed a significant difference between the ISC maps of the autistic and control groups in tasks involving the comprehension of non-verbal communication, thereby revealing several brain regions where correlation of brain activity was greater within the control group. The results suggest a possible weaker modulation of brain states in response to the pragmatic non-verbal communicative situations in autistic participants. Although there was no difference between the groups in behavioural responses to ABaCo items, there was more variability in the accuracy of the responses in the autistic group. Furthermore, mean answering and reaction times correlated with the severity of autistic traits. The results indicate that even if young autistic adults may have learned to use compensatory resources in their communicative-pragmatic comprehension, pragmatic processing in naturalistic situations still requires additional effort.

Pragmatics: Mapping Evidence on Enhancing Children’s Use of Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Capacities for Interactive Communication

“…Research in pragmatics has also been demonstrated to correlate with the clusters identified in our scientometric analysis. Among these studies are those investigating variations in pragmatic language learning in non-English contexts [ 145 ], aspects of politeness [ 146 ], using virtual reality for developing pragmatic language [ 147 ], pragmatics and reasoning [ 148 ], ritual interaction [ 132 ], hearing impairment and pragmatic language skills [ 149 ], autism and neural association of pragmatic language skills [ 150 ], linguistic prediction at the pragmatic language level [ 151 ], mind reading in pragmatics [ 152 , 153 ] and executive functions and pragmatic language skills [ 154 ].…”

Inter-subject correlations of EEG reflect subjective arousal and acoustic features of music

“…ISC analysis is a method of collectively analyzing shared brain activity, which can be used to quantify the degree to which a subject’s brain activity is similar to that of other subjects ( Hasson et al, 2004 ; Simony et al, 2016 ). Previous studies on ISCs to natural stimuli used audiovisual stimuli such as film ( Hasson et al, 2008 ; Kauppi et al, 2010 ; Dmochowski et al, 2012 ; Tu et al, 2019 ; Bolton et al, 2020 ; Gruskin et al, 2020 ; Patel et al, 2021 ; Ou et al, 2022 ), television/video ( Cantlon and Li, 2013 ; Schmälzle et al, 2013 ; Chen and Farivar, 2020 ; Kotila et al, 2021 ), stories ( Wilson et al, 2008 ; Finn et al, 2018 ; Lerner et al, 2018 ; Cohen et al, 2022 ), speech ( Schmälzle et al, 2015 ), and audio ( Kandeepan et al, 2020 ; Thiede et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Recent advances in statistical methods and meta-analysis have allowed the incorporation of big data into human imaging (Pando-Naude et al, 2021). Using techniques of the activation likelihood estimation (ALE; Laird et al, 2010) methodology, a coordinatebased algorithm for meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies, Pando-Naude et al (2021) conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis of a wide range of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. The results revealed that music perception involves the right superior temporal gyrus (STG), left superior frontal gyrus, left medial frontal gyrus, right lentiform nucleus (putamen), left lentiform nucleus (putamen), caudate, left cerebellum, left insula, and right frontal gyrus (Pando-Naude et al, 2021).…”