School of Psychology, University of Kent, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK.
Autism Res. 2020 Apr;13(4):563-578. doi: 10.1002/aur.2272. Epub 2020 Feb 4.
Typically developing adults are able to keep track of story characters' emotional states online while reading. Filik et al. showed that initially, participants expected the victim to be more hurt by ironic comments than literal, but later considered them less hurtful; ironic comments were regarded as more amusing. We examined these processes in autistic adults, since previous research has demonstrated socio-emotional difficulties among autistic people, which may lead to problems processing irony and its related emotional processes despite an intact ability to integrate language in context. We recorded eye movements from autistic and nonautistic adults while they read narratives in which a character (the victim) was either criticized in an ironic or a literal manner by another character (the protagonist). A target sentence then either described the victim as feeling hurt/amused by the comment, or the protagonist as having intended to hurt/amused the victim by making the comment. Results from the nonautistic adults broadly replicated the key findings from Filik et al., supporting the two-stage account. Importantly, the autistic adults did not show comparable two-stage processing of ironic language; they did not differentiate between the emotional responses for victims or protagonists following ironic versus literal criticism. These findings suggest that autistic people experience a specific difficulty taking into account other peoples' communicative intentions (i.e., infer their mental state) to appropriately anticipate emotional responses to an ironic comment. We discuss how these difficulties might link to atypical socio-emotional processing in autism, and the ability to maintain successful real-life social interactions. Autism Res 2020, 13: 563-578. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: In line with research showing that autistic people have difficulties considering others' mental states, we found autistic adults were impaired at distinguishing the emotions and intentions experienced by story characters who received sarcastic comments (e.g., "That was fantastic parking" in a context where someone's parking was particularly bad). These findings highlight the difficulties that autistic people experience taking into account other peoples' intentions during communication to appropriately anticipate their emotional responses. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
通常情况下，正在成长的成年人在阅读时能够在线追踪故事角色的情绪状态。Filik 等人表明，最初，参与者预计受害者会因讽刺评论而受到比字面评论更大的伤害，但后来认为它们的伤害较小；讽刺评论被认为更有趣。我们在自闭症成年人中检查了这些过程，因为之前的研究表明自闭症人群存在社交情感困难，这可能导致他们在处理讽刺及其相关情感过程中出现问题，尽管他们有能力整合语境中的语言。我们记录了自闭症和非自闭症成年人在阅读叙述时的眼球运动，其中一个角色（受害者）被另一个角色（主角）以讽刺或字面的方式批评。然后，目标句子要么描述受害者对评论感到受伤/感到有趣，要么描述主角通过发表评论有意伤害/使受害者感到有趣。非自闭症成年人的结果广泛复制了 Filik 等人的关键发现，支持两阶段理论。重要的是，自闭症成年人并没有对讽刺语言表现出类似的两阶段处理；他们没有区分受害者或主角在受到讽刺或字面批评后的情绪反应。这些发现表明，自闭症患者在考虑他人的沟通意图（即推断他们的心理状态）以适当预测对讽刺评论的情绪反应时，会遇到特定的困难。我们讨论了这些困难如何与自闭症中的非典型社交情感处理相关，以及维持成功现实社交互动的能力。自闭症研究 2020, 13: 563-578. © 2020 自闭症国际研究协会，威利期刊，公司。 概要：根据表明自闭症患者在考虑他人心理状态方面存在困难的研究，我们发现自闭症成年人在区分接受讽刺评论的故事角色的情绪和意图方面存在障碍（例如，“停车停得真好”在某人停车特别差的背景下）。这些发现强调了自闭症患者在沟通中考虑他人意图以适当预测他们的情绪反应时所经历的困难。 © 2020 自闭症国际研究协会，威利期刊，公司。
