Inference processing in adolescents with Asperger syndrome: Relationship with theory of mind abilities
Section snippets
Participants
Ten adolescents diagnosed with AS (10M/0F) were recruited via a local association (APIPA 51: Parents’ Association for the integration of individuals with AS and high-functioning autism). Their diagnosis had been made by a team of qualified clinicians (child neuropsychologists and a pediatrician), using DSM-IV criteria (1994). The participants included in the study had no reported hearing difficulties and were free of other neuropsychiatric disorders (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder,
Semantic inference tasks
A one-way ANOVA on the mean number of correct responses was conducted to assess differences between the Asperger and control participants. Group was treated as a between-participants factor, while type of semantic inference was treated as a within-participants factor (causal vs. predictive inference) (Fig. 1).
As expected, results indicated that the Asperger individuals drew fewer inferences (both causal and predictive) than controls (F(1,18) = 14.52, p < .001). The number of correct responses given
Discussion
Significant differences between the adolescents with AS and their controls were found in performances on inference processing and on the theory-of-mind task. First, as expected, results indicated that, compared with their matched controls, Asperger individuals had greater difficulty drawing semantic (both causal and predictive) and pragmatic (both simple and complex) inferences. Second, our results indicated that AS participants, like their matched controls, performed less well on the pragmatic
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank all the adolescents and their families who gave of their time for this research. Thanks are extended to the APIPA 51 (parent's association for integration of individuals with Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism), in particular Anne Viallèle for her assistance in recruiting the Asperger syndrome participants in this study.
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2018, Research in Autism Spectrum DisordersCitation Excerpt :Data from studies by Ricketts et al. (2013) and Williams, Minshew, and Goldstein, (2015) indicated that for children with ASD and adequate sentence level language skills, reading comprehension impairments may be related to syndrome specific higher order inferential and cognitive processing challenges. Individuals with ASD have demonstrated difficulty with verbal reasoning, inference generation, and answering questions about inferences (Lucas & Norbury, 2015; Norbury & Nation, 2011; Saldaña & Frith, 2007; Tirado & Saldaña, 2016); this is particularly evident when needing to use ToM to make inferences about social information regarding emotional states, mental states, or intentionality (Bodner, Engelhardt, Minshew, & Williams, 2015; Happé, 1994; Kaland et al., 2008; Le Sourn-Bissauoi, Caillies, Gierski, & Motte, 2009). Emerging research highlights the impact of individual differences in ToM on TD children’s experiences in school and the pathways that might link ToM to academic success.
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2015, Learning and Individual DifferencesCitation Excerpt :Particularly affected are their understanding of jokes and figurative language (see Norbury, 2004), as well as their performance on different measures of reading comprehension (e.g., Frith & Snowling, 1983). In some authors' judgment, central coherence ability is necessary for processing social information, therefore its deficit could explain social difficulties (Sourn-Bissaoui et al., 2009). To measure this construct, many authors have used the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) by Witkin, Oltman, Raskin, and Karp (1987).
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2013, Journal of Communication DisordersCitation Excerpt :Finally, our results support the notion that the difficulty experienced by individuals with ASD in understanding emotional speech stems from the problems they have drawing appropriate inferences, especially in multiple-cue environments. This result is consistent with studies indicating that individuals with ASD exhibit basic receptive prosodic ability (Baker, Montgomerry, & Abramson, 2010; Brennand et al., 2011; Grossman et al., 2010) but have impaired inferential processing (Dennis et al., 2001; Le Sourn-Bissaoui, Caillies, Gierski, & Motte, 2009; Norbury & Bishop, 2002), which only manifested itself for positive prosody in the present study. Our results therefore partly confirm the view that the processing of emotional vocal cues is contingent upon task demands (Chevallier et al., 2011) and could explain why individuals with ASD display a more severe deficit in ecological settings, where they have to pay attention to multiple cues within a very short space of time.
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2011, Research in Autism Spectrum DisordersCitation Excerpt :They probably did not process idiomatic expressions via semantic inference drawing but as a long word and show an inability to access to the less salient literal meaning of the idiomatic expressions (Giora, 1999). This result is consistent with studies indicating that high-function individuals with autism may exhibit some mechanical and procedural skills (Minshew, Goldstein, & Siegel, 1995) and presented impairments in inferential processing (Dennis et al., 2001; Le Sourn-Bissaoui, Caillies, Gierski, & Motte, 2009; Norbury & Bishop, 2002). Our second purpose was to identify the factors that account for the difficulty in detecting ambiguity showed in AS.
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