Gernsbacher Morton Ann, Pripas-Kapit Sarah R
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
University of California, Los Angeles.
Metaphor Symb. 2012;27(1):93-105. doi: 10.1080/10926488.2012.656255.
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.
认为自闭症患者不懂比喻性语言，这已经成为了一种对他们的刻板印象。尽管有相反的实证证据，但本期特刊的四篇来稿中有三篇都毫无疑问地认可了这种刻板印象。而且所有四篇来稿都将这种所谓的缺陷归因于更站不住脚的谬论，比如有争议的说法，即自闭症患者缺乏同理心或“心理理论”。在这篇评论中，我们首先比其他来稿更详尽地回顾了文献，并强调了一个他们遗漏的观点：如果自闭症患者在一般语言理解方面也有困难，那么他们很可能在理解比喻性语言方面存在困难。自闭症似乎不存在特有的比喻性语言缺陷。我们还探讨了自闭症患者缺乏同理心这一说法。并且我们质疑“心理理论区域”的存在，同时展示了研究人员在竭力将自闭症和非自闭症大脑活动的差异仅仅解释为自闭症缺陷时所陷入的陷阱。
