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Free keywords:
autistic disorder
asperger syndrome
pragmatics
inferences
scalar implicatures
language understanding
Abstract:
Although people with autism spectrum disorders
(ASD) often have severe problems with pragmatic
aspects of language, little is known about their pragmatic
reasoning. We carried out a behavioral study on highfunctioning
adults with autistic disorder (n = 11) and
Asperger syndrome (n = 17) and matched controls
(n = 28) to investigate whether they are capable of deriving
scalar implicatures, which are generally considered to be
pragmatic inferences. Participants were presented with
underinformative sentences like ‘‘Some sparrows are
birds’’. This sentence is logically true, but pragmatically
inappropriate if the scalar implicature ‘‘Not all sparrows are
birds’’ is derived. The present findings indicate that the
combined ASD group was just as likely as controls to derive
scalar implicatures, yet there was a difference between
participants with autistic disorder and Asperger syndrome,
suggesting a potential differentiation between these disorders
in pragmatic reasoning. Moreover, our results suggest
that verbal intelligence is a constraint for task performance
in autistic disorder but not in Asperger syndrome.
