Selective Pragmatic Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Indirect Requests Versus Irony

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often described as being characterised by a uniform pragmatic impairment. However, recent evidence suggests that some areas of pragmatic functioning are preserved. This study seeks to determine to which extent context-based derivation of non-linguistically encoded m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of autism and developmental disorders 2018-09, Vol.48 (9), p.2938-2952
Main Authors: Deliens, Gaétane, Papastamou, Fanny, Ruytenbeek, Nicolas, Geelhand, Philippine, Kissine, Mikhail
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Adults
Autism
Autism Spectrum Disorder - diagnosis
Autism Spectrum Disorder - psychology
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Child and School Psychology
Comparative Analysis
Comprehension
Comprehension - physiology
Derivation
Evaluation
Executive Function - physiology
Female
Figurative Language
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Interpersonal Communication
Irony
Language skills
Linguistics
Male
Meaning
Mental states
Middle Aged
Neurosciences
Original Paper
Pediatrics
Pervasive Developmental Disorders
Photic Stimulation - methods
Pragmatic impairment
Pragmatics
Psychology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Public Health
Social aspects
Social Skills
Young Adult
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Summary:Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often described as being characterised by a uniform pragmatic impairment. However, recent evidence suggests that some areas of pragmatic functioning are preserved. This study seeks to determine to which extent context-based derivation of non-linguistically encoded meaning is functional in ASD. We compare the performance of 24 adults with ASD, and matched neuro-typical adults in two act-out pragmatic tasks. The first task examines generation of indirect request interpretations, and the second the comprehension of irony. Intact contextual comprehension of indirect requests contrasts with marked difficulties in understanding irony. These results suggest that preserved pragmatics in ASD is limited to egocentric processing of context, which does not rely on assumptions about the speaker’s mental states.
ISSN:0162-3257
1573-3432
DOI:10.1007/s10803-018-3561-6