Who's Missing the Point? A Commentary on Claims that Autistic Persons Have a Specific Deficit in Figurative Language Comprehension

Abstract

It’s become a caricature of autistic persons that they don’t understand figurative language. Despite empirical evidence to the contrary, three of the four contributions to this special issue endorse this stereotype without question. And all four contributions attribute this supposed deficit to even shakier fallacies, such as the controversial claim that autistic people lack empathy or a ‘theory of mind.’ In this commentary, we begin by reviewing the literature more exhaustively than the other contributions, and we highlight a point that they missed: Autistic persons are likely to have difficulty comprehending figurative language if they also have difficulty comprehending language in general. There doesn’t seem to be a specific deficit in figurative language unique to autism. We also tackle the claim that autistic people lack empathy. And we question the existence of a ‘theory of mind area,’ while demonstrating the pitfalls that ensnarl researchers when they strain to interpret differences between autistic and non-autistic brain activity as solely autistic deficits.

Trajectories of pragmatic and nonliteral language development in children with autism spectrum disorders

“…Additionally, children with ASD (especially those with good syntax abilities) were able to benefit from the use of context in understanding unfamiliar idiomatic phrases (Norbury, 2004). This line of research overall suggests that some children with ASD may not show impairments in pragmatic language or nonliteral language if they show significant progress in the development of their basic language abilities (Gernsbacher & Pripas-Kapit, 2012;Norbury, 2004Norbury, , 2005Whyte et al, 2014). Thus, understanding the role of expressive vocabulary and syntax abilities in supporting the development of pragmatic language and nonliteral language may be important for choosing appropriate matching variables to prevent biased conclusions about the nature of language abilities for individuals with ASD.…”

“…For TD children, there is some evidence that language abilities develop together in parallel, with basic language abilities (such as vocabulary) correlating strongly with nonliteral language abilities (Johnson, 1991;Rundblad & Annaz, 2010a). Research suggests that understanding of nonliteral language is supported by the ability to use the linguistic and social context to abstract meaning, and that vocabulary and syntax abilities are likely to support this process (Gernsbacher & Pripas-Kapit, 2012;Rundblad & Annaz, 2010a;Vosniadou, 1987). With regard to pragmatic language, Volden et al (2009) found that a composite of expressive and receptive basic language abilities predicted a large portion of the variance in pragmatic language ability for children with ASD.…”

“…It is possible that syntax abilities, specifically, are predictive of their relative pragmatic (Volden et al, 2009) and nonliteral language abilities (Gernsbacher & Pripas-Kapit, 2012;Norbury, 2004Norbury, , 2005Whyte, Nelson, & Khan, 2013) for individuals with ASD, rather than a diagnosis of ASD in particular. For nonliteral language, Norbury (2005) found that syntax comprehension is a better predictor of metaphor comprehension than receptive vocabulary in particular, for children with language impairments, regardless of whether or not they exhibited social impairments associated with ASD.…”

“…For group matching approaches, the choice of matching variables needs to be theory-driven, as improperly matched groups runs a risk of leading to biased conclusions about the nature of symptoms in autism (Gernsbacher & Pripas-Kapit, 2012;Jarrold & Brock, 2004;Thomas et al, 2009). However, the trajectory approach does not require this same a priori group matching.…”

Where in the brain is nonliteral language? A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies

“…The figurativeness of non-literal language inspired researchers to use metaphors (Aziz-Zadeh et al, 2006) and idioms (Boulenger et al, 2009) as stimuli to investigate motor semantics. The ability to comprehend non-literal language is impaired in a number of clinical populations (Gernsbacher and Pripas-Kapit, 2012;Thoma and Daum, 2006), including patients with schizophrenia (Rapp, 2009;Rapp and Schmierer, 2010), autistic subjects (Martin and McDonald, 2004), and patients with dementia (Rapp and Wild, 2011) or other neurodevelopmental disorders (Annaz et al, 2009).…”