The Relationship between Comprehension of Figurative Language by Japanese Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders and College Freshmen’s Assessment of Its Conventionality of Usage
Unlike their English-speaking counterparts, Japanese children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs) perform as well as typically developing (TD) children in comprehending metaphor, despite lacking 1st order theory of mind (ToM) reasoning. Additionally, although Japanese sarcasm and “indirect reproach” appear theoretically to need 2nd order ToM reasoning, HFASD children without this comprehended these forms of language as well as TD children. To attempt to explain this contradiction, we asked college freshmen to evaluate the strangeness (unconventionality) of these types of figurative language. We aimed to test the hypothesis that metaphor, sarcasm, and “indirect reproach” might be evaluated as more conventional than irony, which children with HFASDs do not comprehend as well as those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The results for irony, metaphor, and “indirect reproach” supported the hypothesis, while those for sarcasm did not. Sarcasm is comprehended by HFASDs children as well as by TD children despite being evaluated as highly unconventional. This contradiction is discussed from a self-in-relation-to-other perspective. We postulate that a new explanation of disabilities of figurative language comprehension in children with HFASDs is needed instead of relying on a single cognitive process. 1. Introduction As Norbury and Sparks [1] have suggested, autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) might be better understood when examined from a cultural point of view. Cross-cultural studies might also help to refine cognitive theories of disorder that have been derived exclusively from North American and European investigations. This is the case for the comprehension of figurative language in autism [2–9], which seems to vary greatly between cultures in terms of ways of using metaphorical expression and saying something disagreeable. For example, in Japanese, metaphors are more fluid than in English [10]. Moreover, while irony is regarded as conveying not just a negative meaning but also humor in English, few studies have attempted to investigate any positive role irony has to play in Japanese conversation [11]. Moreover, Japanese has many varieties of sarcasm [12]. The average Japanese person would find it hard to distinguish between the English terms “irony” and “sarcasm.” Even among professionals, the Japanese hiniku is translated not only as “irony” but occasionally as “sarcasm,” as by Adachi et al. [13]. In the present study, irony was defined as “the expression of one’s meaning by using words of the opposite meaning in order to
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