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Contextual and Visual Cues in the Interpretation of Idioms in High Functioning Autism
The difficulties experienced by autistic individuals with regard to communication and language are widely known and well documented. Individuals with High functioning autism (ASD) are distinguished by relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive skills. However, problems with pragmatic language skills have been consistently reported across the autistic spectrum, even when structural language is intact. Many studies establish failure to understand metaphors, idioms and other forms of figurative language (Gold & Faust, 2010; Vulchanova, Talcott, Vulchanov & Stankova, 2012).
Objectives:
Our main goal was to investigate how ASD individuals process idioms as a type of figurative language, and, specifically, how they integrate information from multiple sources (e.g. visual modality and language) in this process. In this study, we were interested in the extent to which visual context, e.g., an image corresponding to either the literal meaning or the idiomatic meaning of the expression can facilitate responses to such expressions.
Methods:
Four categories of figurative expressions were included: biological idioms, cultural idioms, instructive idioms (proverbs) and novel metaphors. Participants with high-functioning autism and their typically developing peers (matched in intelligence and language level) had to complete a sentence-picture matching task for idioms and their target meaning represented in images. The expressions were presented visually on a computer screen or auditorily via loudspeakers. We measured the participants’ performance based on their accuracy, reaction times, mouse tracking data and eye tracking data.
Results:
We hypothesized that since individuals with ASD have a tendency for literal interpretation, they would have difficulties in appreciating the non-literal or extended nature of idioms and figurative language in general. Analyses of accuracy (ACC) and reaction times (RTs) showed clearly that the ASD participants were less accurate. In addition, the modality in which the stimuli were presented turned out to be an important variable in task performance. The auditory modality seems to assist the control group for better understanding. We also found differences in performance depending on the category of the expression. Participants with ASD had more difficulties understanding cultural and instructive idioms. In contrast, controls were faster and more accurate in all categories and showed no differences between the two modalities. Furthermore, ASD participants presented longer RTs and errors in the instructive idioms in comparison with the other categories in both modalities. Eye-tracking and mouse-tracking data were interpreted to support these findings.
Conclusions:
This research highlights the way in which the processing figurative language differs from typically developing individuals and individuals in the autistic spectrum. In addition, this study can contribute to better understanding of the causes of pragmatic language problems in autism, and more broadly the well-attested comprehension and communication problems in that population.