Williams Gemma L, Wharton Tim, Jagoe Caroline
School of Humanities, University of Brighton, Brighton, United Kingdom.
School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 29;12:616664. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.616664. eCollection 2021.
A central diagnostic and anecdotal feature of is difficulty with social . We take the position that communication is a two-way, phenomenon-as described by the -and offer up (a cognitive account of utterance interpretation) as a means of explaining such communication difficulties. Based on a set of proposed heuristics for successful and rapid interpretation of intended meaning, relevance theory positions communication as contingent on shared-and, importantly, recognized-"relevance." Given that autistic and non-autistic people may have sometimes markedly different embodied experiences of the world, we argue that what is most salient to each interlocutor may be mismatched. Relevance theory would predict that where this salient information is not (mutually) recognized or adjusted for, mutual understanding may be more effortful to achieve. This paper presents the findings from a small-scale, linguistic ethnographic study of autistic communication featuring eight core autistic participants. Each core autistic participant engaged in three naturalistic conversations around the topic of loneliness with: (1) a familiar, chosen conversation partner; (2) a non-autistic stranger and (3) an autistic stranger. Relevance theory is utilized as a frame for the linguistic analysis of the interactions. Mutual understanding was unexpectedly high across all types of conversation pairings. In conversations involving two autistic participants, flow, rapport and intersubjective attunement were significantly increased and in three instances, autistic interlocutors appeared to experience improvements in their individual communicative competence contrasted with their other conversations. The findings have the potential to guide future thinking about how, in practical terms, communication between autistic and non-autistic people in both personal and public settings might be improved.
[此处文本似乎不完整，开头“A central diagnostic and anecdotal feature of is difficulty with social.”中“of”后面缺少内容]的一个核心诊断和轶事特征是社交方面存在困难。我们认为沟通是一种双向的[此处“phenomenon-as described by the -”表述不完整]现象，并提出关联理论（一种关于话语解释的认知解释）作为解释此类沟通困难的一种方式。基于一组用于成功快速解释预期意义的启发式方法，关联理论认为沟通取决于共享的——而且重要的是，被认可的——“关联性”。鉴于自闭症患者和非自闭症患者对世界的具身体验有时可能存在显著差异，我们认为每个对话者最突出的信息可能不匹配。关联理论预测，在这种突出信息未被（相互）认可或调整的情况下，实现相互理解可能会更加费力。本文展示了一项针对自闭症沟通的小规模语言人种志研究的结果，该研究有八名核心自闭症参与者。每位核心自闭症参与者围绕孤独主题与以下人员进行了三次自然对话：（1）一位熟悉的、选定的对话伙伴；（2）一位非自闭症陌生人；（3）一位自闭症陌生人。关联理论被用作互动语言分析的框架。在所有类型的对话组合中，相互理解出人意料地高。在涉及两名自闭症参与者的对话中，流畅性、融洽度和主体间协调度显著提高，在三个案例中，与其他对话相比，自闭症对话者的个人沟通能力似乎有所提升。这些发现有可能指导未来关于如何在实际中改善自闭症患者和非自闭症患者在个人和公共场合沟通的思考。
