Department of Communication Disorders, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel.
The School of Education, Bar Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat Gan, Israel.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2019 Dec;49(12):4740-4750. doi: 10.1007/s10803-019-04193-9.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with deficient comprehension of figurative language and, specifically, idioms. Theories ascribe this to deficits in specific abilities (e.g., Theory of Mind [ToM]; executive functions [EF]; general language skills), but no comprehensive theory has resulted. This study investigated the differential contribution of various abilities to idiom comprehension among children and adolescents with ASD compared to matched controls with typical development (TD). The TD group outperformed the ASD group in idiom comprehension. However, whereas EF predicted idiom comprehension in the TD group, vocabulary predicted idiom comprehension in the ASD group. Our findings emphasize the link between general language competence and figurative language comprehension in ASD and point to different processing mechanisms in each group.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）与对比喻性语言的理解能力不足有关，尤其是习语。理论将其归因于特定能力的缺陷（例如，心理理论[ToM]；执行功能[EF]；一般语言技能），但没有产生全面的理论。本研究调查了不同能力对自闭症谱系障碍儿童和青少年与具有典型发育（TD）的匹配对照组的习语理解的差异贡献。TD 组在习语理解方面优于 ASD 组。然而，在 TD 组中，EF 预测了习语的理解，而在 ASD 组中，词汇则预测了习语的理解。我们的发现强调了一般语言能力和 ASD 中隐喻语言理解之间的联系，并指出了每个组中不同的处理机制。
