The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
Brain Lang. 2010 Jun;113(3):124-34. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2010.03.002. Epub 2010 Mar 31.
Previous research indicates severe disabilities in processing figurative language in people diagnosed on the autism spectrum disorders. However, this aspect of language comprehension in Asperger syndrome (AS) specifically has rarely been the subject of formal study. The present study aimed to examine the possibility that in addition to their pragmatic deficits, the difficulties in the comprehension of metaphors in AS may be explained by deficient linguistic information processing. Specifically, we aimed to examine whether a deficient semantic integration process underlies the difficulties in metaphor comprehension frequently experienced by persons with AS. The semantic integration process of sixteen AS participants and sixteen matched controls was examined using event related potentials (ERPs). N400 amplitude served as an index for degree of effort invested in the semantic integration process of two-word expressions denoting literal, conventional metaphoric, and novel metaphoric meaning, as well as unrelated word pairs. Large N400 amplitudes for both novel and conventional metaphors demonstrated the greater difficulties in metaphor comprehension in the AS participants as compared to controls. Findings suggest that differences in linguistic information processing cause difficulties in metaphor comprehension in AS.
先前的研究表明，被诊断患有自闭症谱系障碍的人群在处理比喻语言方面存在严重障碍。然而，阿斯伯格综合征（AS）在语言理解方面的这一方面很少成为正式研究的主题。本研究旨在探讨除了语用缺陷之外，AS 患者在理解隐喻方面的困难是否可以用语言信息处理不足来解释。具体来说，我们旨在检验语义整合过程的缺陷是否是 AS 患者经常遇到的隐喻理解困难的基础。使用事件相关电位（ERP）来检查十六名 AS 参与者和十六名匹配对照组的语义整合过程。N400 振幅作为衡量投入两个词表达式的语义整合过程的努力程度的指标，这些表达式表示字面、传统隐喻和新颖隐喻的含义以及不相关的词对。对于新颖和传统的隐喻，N400 振幅都很大，这表明 AS 参与者在隐喻理解方面比对照组更困难。研究结果表明，语言信息处理的差异导致 AS 患者在隐喻理解方面存在困难。
