Metaphor Comprehension in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Core Language Skills Matter.
Tamara Kalandadze, Johan Braeken, Cecilia Brynskov and 1 others
PMID 33689089WHAT IT FOUND
Metaphor difficulty in autism is not a hallmark trait but depends on core language skills.
Expressive vocabulary and abstract semantic reasoning explained the performance gap. Receptive grammar did not. Assess and support underlying vocabulary and semantic reasoning before targeting figurative language directly.
Key findings
01Individuals with ASD had lower overall metaphor task scores than those with typical development, but the difference in metaphor-specific scores was not statistically significant.
02Expressive vocabulary was the strongest predictor of metaphor comprehension, largely explaining the performance difference between the ASD and typical development groups.
03Receptive grammar did not significantly affect metaphor task performance, possibly because the test items used simple syntactic structures.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample size was small (59 participants total). There was a significant gender imbalance, with mostly males in the ASD group and mostly females in the TD group. The metaphor task was created specifically for this study and is not a standardized, validated measure. The study only included verbally fluent individuals with ASD, so results do not apply to those with minimal speech. Theory of Mind and executive functioning were not controlled for, so their contribution cannot be ruled out.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest or funding sources were reported in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the lower total scores in the ASD group as evidence of a specific 'metaphor deficit' or a hallmark of autism. The study found that the difficulty was largely explained by lower expressive vocabulary and core language skills, and the specific gap between literal and metaphor performance was not significantly different between groups.