Metaphor Comprehension Special Issue

Novel metaphor processing in young autistic children

---

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore possible differences betweenautistic and neurotypical (NT) children in novel metaphor comprehension. Muchof the recent literature has related metaphor comprehension difficulties thatautistic individuals exhibit to general linguistic abilities. In our design, wecarefully pair-matched young autistic children (3.13 to 12.25 years of age) toNT controls (3.69 to 9.04 years of age) on verbal mental age and tested theirmetaphor interpretation abilities with a picture selection paradigm combinedwith eye tracking measures. We predicted differences in performance in bothtypes of measures, although we foresaw autistic participants performing abovechance in the picture selection task. However, results did not show adifference between groups in the picture selection task, which would favoraccounts that relate metaphor interpretation to linguistic abilities inautistic population. Interestingly, the eye tracking observations revealeddifferences between groups concerning gaze movements in the regioncorresponding to the processing of the metaphoric vehicle.  Such differences replicate those found inprevious studies with similar designs, such as Vulchanova et al.’s (2019). Onthe other hand, the evidence presented and discussed in the paper does notsuggest either impairment or delay with respect to metaphor processing. Rather,the evidence only suggests differences. While the source of such processingdifferences is still unknown, the results of the current study cast some doubtson the idea that the main factor in metaphor processing in the autisticpopulation is their structural language level. 

Keywords: Metaphor, Autism, Eye-tracker