Figurative language comprehension in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analytic review.
Tamar Kalandadze, Courtenay Norbury, Terje Nærland and 1 others
PMID 27899711WHAT IT FOUND
Individuals with ASD showed poorer figurative language comprehension than typically developing controls on average, but language-matched groups showed little difference.
Metaphor differences were larger than irony or sarcasm.
Key findings
01Across 45 independent effect sizes involving 1119 individuals with ASD and 978 TD controls, figurative language comprehension was moderately poorer for individuals with ASD than for TD controls.
02The group difference depended on matching: language-matched groups showed a small nonsignificant difference (g = -0.06), while age-matched groups showed a large difference (g = -0.92).
03Metaphor comprehension showed larger group differences than irony and sarcasm comprehension (g = -0.72 versus g = -0.48).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only individuals with verbal IQ above 70 were included, so the results may not apply to individuals with ASD who have lower verbal ability. The review did not include longitudinal studies, so it cannot show how figurative language comprehension develops in the same individuals over time. Theory of mind could not be analysed as an independent predictor because too few studies measured it separately, so its role remains unclear. Dependent subgroup comparisons were collapsed into composite scores, which hid the original finding that language-matched comparisons often showed little or no difference. The included studies used different tasks and often did not separate novel from conventional metaphors, so the average effect may not match any single clinical test.
Declared interests
The authors reported no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that an ASD diagnosis alone always explains figurative language comprehension problems. The overall difference favoured typically developing controls, but the language-matched comparison was small and nonsignificant (g = -0.06).