Andreou Maria, Lampri Stella, Marinis Theodoros, Peristeri Eleni
Department of Speech and Language Therapy, University of Peloponnese, Kalamata, Greece.
Department of Linguistics, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Autism Res. 2025 Mar;18(3):632-647. doi: 10.1002/aur.70009. Epub 2025 Feb 22.
Figurative language, including metaphors and similes, is a crucial component of communication; yet, it presents significant challenges for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A critical gap in existing research is the impact of bilingualism on the ability of children with ASD to understand and produce non-literal speech. This study addresses this gap by examining the comprehension and production of metaphors and similes in monolingual and bilingual Greek-speaking children with high-functioning ASD. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate these abilities in bilingual children with ASD. Thirty-three monolingual and 18 bilingual children participated in tasks designed to assess comprehension, production, and error patterns for metaphors and similes. The study has also investigated the roles of non-verbal intelligence, language skills (expressive vocabulary), and executive functions (working memory) in the children's performance in the metaphor and simile tasks. Results showed that the two groups did not differ in metaphor comprehension; however, bilingual autistic children with higher non-verbal intelligence appeared to have superior performance in metaphor comprehension compared to their bilingual peers with lower non-verbal intelligence. The bilingual autistic children outperformed their monolingual peers in metaphor production, likely due to their higher non-verbal intelligence ability, despite the fact that the bilingual group had lower expressive vocabulary scores than the monolingual children. Simile comprehension, on the other hand, favored monolingual children, while no significant group differences were observed in simile production. Regarding errors, both groups exhibited similar error patterns, with literal interpretations being the dominant error type across both groups, suggesting that pragmatic language difficulty is a hallmark feature in ASD. The findings challenge the misconception that bilingualism hinders language development in children with ASD and highlight its potential to provide benefits in the realm of non-literal language processing.
包括隐喻和明喻在内的比喻性语言是交流的关键组成部分；然而，它给自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者带来了重大挑战。现有研究中的一个关键空白是双语对患有ASD的儿童理解和生成非字面语言能力的影响。本研究通过考察单语和双语的希腊语高功能ASD儿童对隐喻和明喻的理解与生成来填补这一空白。据我们所知，这是第一项调查患有ASD的双语儿童这些能力的研究。33名单语儿童和18名双语儿童参与了旨在评估隐喻和明喻的理解、生成及错误模式的任务。该研究还调查了非言语智力、语言技能（表达性词汇）和执行功能（工作记忆）在儿童隐喻和明喻任务表现中的作用。结果表明，两组在隐喻理解方面没有差异；然而，非言语智力较高的双语自闭症儿童在隐喻理解方面似乎比非言语智力较低的双语同龄人表现更优。双语自闭症儿童在隐喻生成方面优于单语同龄人，这可能是因为他们具有较高的非言语智力能力，尽管双语组的表达性词汇得分低于单语儿童。另一方面，明喻理解更有利于单语儿童，而在明喻生成方面未观察到显著的组间差异。关于错误，两组表现出相似的错误模式，字面解释是两组中占主导的错误类型，这表明语用语言困难是ASD的一个标志性特征。这些发现挑战了双语会阻碍ASD儿童语言发展的误解，并突出了其在非字面语言处理领域提供益处的潜力。
