TY - JOUR
T1 - Salience and Context
T2 - Interpretation of Metaphorical and Literal Language by Young Adults Diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome
AU - Giora, Rachel
AU - Gazal, Oshrat
AU - Goldstein, Idit
AU - Fein, Ofer
AU - Stringaris, Argyris
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors dedicate the article to Inga Eidelman, who passed away shortly after she had finished preparing the program for their studies. The studies reported here were supported by a grant to Rachel Giora by The Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 652/07) and Vice President for Research and Development at TAU Encouragement Fund. The authors wish to thank Tamir Atsmon, the head of Beit Ekstein’s Group home Beit Ofek–Afeka, for allowing them access to participants diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and to relevant information about the participants. Thanks are also extended to Zohar Lev from The Multidisciplinary Center for Individuals Diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome of the Beit Ekstein Group and to Professor Tally Sagie and Dr. Assaf Tripto for information about the diagnostic tests. They also thank Neta Rousso and Dr. Ronit Welgreen for helpful information and for all their help. In particular, they are very grateful to the participants with AS for their cooperation. Additionally, they wish to thank Atar Abramson and Haim Dubossarsky for running Experiment 3 and Yossi Arzouan, Henri Cohen, Miriam Faust, Barbara Hemforth, Barbara Kaup, Itamar Mendelson, Orna Peleg, Yeshayahu Shen, Eran Zaidel, and two reviewers for very helpful comments and criticisms.
PY - 2012/1
Y1 - 2012/1
N2 - Asperger's Syndrome (AS) involves difficulties in social communication but no delays in language or cognitive development. According to the received view, individuals with AS are biased toward the literal and are insensitive to contextual cues. According to the graded salience hypothesis (Giora, 1997, 2003), participants with AS and controls would be sensitive to both context and degree of salience rather than to degree of nonliterality. Our results show that while individuals with AS generally performed worse than controls, their overall pattern of response was similar to that of controls: both groups performed worse on novel than on familiar expressions, whether literal or metaphorical; both groups benefited from context, which reduced response times and error rates on novel but not on familiar metaphors; both groups rated negative utterances as more metaphoric than their affirmative counterparts. Individuals with AS, then, are sensitive to context and degree of salience and are not biased toward the literal.
AB - Asperger's Syndrome (AS) involves difficulties in social communication but no delays in language or cognitive development. According to the received view, individuals with AS are biased toward the literal and are insensitive to contextual cues. According to the graded salience hypothesis (Giora, 1997, 2003), participants with AS and controls would be sensitive to both context and degree of salience rather than to degree of nonliterality. Our results show that while individuals with AS generally performed worse than controls, their overall pattern of response was similar to that of controls: both groups performed worse on novel than on familiar expressions, whether literal or metaphorical; both groups benefited from context, which reduced response times and error rates on novel but not on familiar metaphors; both groups rated negative utterances as more metaphoric than their affirmative counterparts. Individuals with AS, then, are sensitive to context and degree of salience and are not biased toward the literal.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84857264231&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10926488.2012.638823
DO - 10.1080/10926488.2012.638823
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AN - SCOPUS:84857264231
SN - 1092-6488
VL - 27
SP - 22
EP - 54
JO - Metaphor and Symbol
JF - Metaphor and Symbol
IS - 1
ER -