Illocutionary Competence in Irony Comprehension: Insights from Empirical Studies on ASD

The effects of intervention on the comprehension of irony and on hemispheric processing of irony in adults with ASD

Ironic, isn't it!? A review on irony comprehension in children and adolescents with ASD

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Irony comprehension and mentalizing ability in children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Few studies have examined the neural mechanisms of change following social skills interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study examined the neural effects of social cognitive skills groups during functional MRI (fMRI) tasks of irony comprehension and eye gaze processing in school-aged children with ASD. Verbally fluent children (ages 8-11) were randomized to social cognitive skills groups or facilitated play comparison groups. Behavioral assessments and fMRI scans were obtained at baseline and endpoint (12 weeks). During fMRI, children completed two separate tasks to engage social cognition circuitry: comprehension of potentially ironic scenarios (n= 34) and viewing emotionally expressive faces with direct or averted gaze (n= 24). Whole-brain analyses were conducted to examine neural changes following treatment. Regression analyses were also conducted to explore the relationship between neural and behavioral changes. When comparing the two groups directly, the social cognitive skills group showed greater increases in activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), implicated in theory of mind, relative to the comparison group for both irony comprehension and gaze processing tasks. Increased mPFC activity during the irony task was associated with improvement in social functioning on the Social Responsiveness Scale across both groups. Findings indicate that social cognitive skills interventions may increase activity in regions associated with social cognition and mentalizing abilities. LAY SUMMARY: Social skills groups are a common intervention for school-aged children with ASD. However, few studies have examined the neural response to social skills groups in school-aged children with ASD. Here, we report on a study evaluating neural outcomes from an empirically supported social cognitive skills training curriculum using fMRI. This study seeks to understand the effects of targeting emotion recognition and theory of mind on the brain circuitry involved in social cognition in verbally fluent children ages 8-11. Results indicate increased neural activity in the mPFC, a region considered to be a central hub of the "social brain," in children randomized to social cognitive skills groups relative to a comparison group that received a high-quality, child-directed play approach. In addition, increased activation in the mPFC during an irony comprehension task was associated with gains in social functioning across both groups from pre- to post-treatment. This is the first fMRI study of social skills treatment outcomes following a randomized trial with an active treatment condition in school-aged children with ASD.

English-speaking children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are less capable of using prosodic cues such as intonation for irony comprehension. Prosodic cues, in particular intonation, in Cantonese are relatively restricted while sentence-final particles (SFPs) may be used for this pragmatic function. This study investigated the use of prosodic cues and SFPs in irony comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children with and without ASD. Thirteen children with ASD (8;3–12;9) were language-matched with 13 typically developing (TD) peers. By manipulating prosodic cues and SFPs, 16 stories with an ironic remark were constructed. Participants had to judge the speaker's belief and intention. Both groups performed similarly well in judging the speaker's belief. For the speaker's intention, the TD group relied more on SFPs. The ASD group performed significantly poorer and did not rely on either cue. SFPs may play a salient role in Cantonese irony comprehension. The differences between the two groups were discussed by considering the literature on theory of mind.

Effectively serving students with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) requires professionals to possess specialized knowledge, skills, and understanding. When students with ASDs are from culturally or linguistically diverse (CLD) families, the professionals assessing and providing services to the students need the additional dimension of how cultural and linguistic differences may affect identification, assessment, and treatment strategies.

As a pragmatic competence, irony comprehension plays an important role in everyday communication and social relationships. Research to date has mainly focused on irony comprehension in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder. More recently, pragmatic competences of children with ADHD have also received attention, although the focus has been more on global pragmatic competences. A few studies have examined irony comprehension in children with ADHD as a specific pragmatic sub-competence, but many questions remain unresolved. Therefore, the aim of this article is to map the state of research regarding irony comprehension in children with ADHD and, on this basis, to outline a research agenda for future studies investigating this important pragmatic sub-competence in children with ADHD.

Understanding a speaker's communicative intent in everyday interactions is likely to draw on cues such as facial expression and tone of voice. Prior research has shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show reduced activity in brain regions that respond selectively to the face and voice. However, there is also evidence that activity in key regions can be increased if task demands allow for explicit processing of emotion. To examine the neural circuitry underlying impairments in interpreting communicative intentions in ASD using irony comprehension as a test case, and to determine whether explicit instructions to attend to facial expression and tone of voice will elicit more normative patterns of brain activity. Eighteen boys with ASD (aged 7-17 years, full-scale IQ >70) and 18 typically developing (TD) boys underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging at the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, University of California, Los Angeles. Blood oxygenation level-dependent brain activity during the presentation of short scenarios involving irony. Behavioral performance (accuracy and response time) was also recorded. Reduced activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and right superior temporal gyrus was observed in children with ASD relative to TD children during the perception of potentially ironic vs control scenarios. Importantly, a significant group x condition interaction in the medial prefrontal cortex showed that activity was modulated by explicit instructions to attend to facial expression and tone of voice only in the ASD group. Finally, medial prefrontal cortex activity was inversely related to symptom severity in children with ASD such that children with greater social impairment showed less activity in this region. Explicit instructions to attend to facial expression and tone of voice can elicit increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, part of a network important for understanding the intentions of others, in children with ASD. These findings suggest a strategy for future intervention research.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often described as being characterised by a uniform pragmatic impairment. However, recent evidence suggests that some areas of pragmatic functioning are preserved. This study seeks to determine to which extent context-based derivation of non-linguistically encoded meaning is functional in ASD. We compare the performance of 24 adults with ASD, and matched neuro-typical adults in two act-out pragmatic tasks. The first task examines generation of indirect request interpretations, and the second the comprehension of irony. Intact contextual comprehension of indirect requests contrasts with marked difficulties in understanding irony. These results suggest that preserved pragmatics in ASD is limited to egocentric processing of context, which does not rely on assumptions about the speaker's mental states.

Come Play With Me

Background and Objectives: The overall objective of the current thesis was to investigate three forms of prospection in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), namely episodic future thinking, episodic foresight and prospective memory (PM), using three empirical studies. While few past studies have found ASD-related impairments in episodic future thinking, there is limited understanding of the mechanisms that might underpin these impairments in this clinical group. The aim of the first empirical study was therefore to investigate whether difficulties in two potential cognitive mechanisms, specifically scene construction and self-projection through time, might contribute to episodic future thinking deficits in children with ASD. In addition, no studies to date have examined the practical application of episodic future thinking, which involves taking steps in the present in light of imaginations of the future (referred to as episodic foresight in the current thesis), in individuals with ASD. Thus, the second empirical study aimed to investigate whether episodic foresight might be compromised in children with ASD, and possible cognitive factors that might underpin any identified episodic foresight deficits. Furthermore, while time-based PM has consistently been shown to be impaired in ASD, findings on event-based PM have been mixed in the literature. The cognitive contributors to impairments in PM also remain unclear. Hence, the aim of the third empirical study was to investigate event-based and time-based PM, as well as their potential contributing factors, in children with ASD. Lastly, given the importance of episodic foresight and PM on daily functioning argued in the literature, the current thesis also explored the relationships between these forms of prospection and functional capacity in children with ASD. Method and Results: Children with high-functioning ASD (i.e., IQ > 80) aged 8 to 12 years and age- and IQ-matched healthy controls were recruited for the current research project. Study 1 (n = 37 ASD, 60 controls) showed that impairments in episodic future thinking were linked to difficulties in scene construction, rather than self-projection through time. In addition, Study 2 (n = 40 ASD, 55 controls) provided novel evidence of an intact capacity to take appropriate steps in the present in anticipation of potential future problems in the ASD group. However, children with the disorder demonstrated an impaired capacity to subsequently implement actions at specific future points that allowed successful problem resolutions, therefore result in a failure in episodic foresight. The impairments in implementing actions at appropriate future points were not attributable to retrospective memory or executive functioning deficits. Study 3 (n = 32 ASD, 42 controls) revealed pervasive deficits in both event-based and time-based PM in children with ASD, and indicated that these deficits were related to difficulties in executive functioning and retrospective memory for PM task content. Finally, episodic foresight and PM were not found to be associated with functional capacity in the ASD group. Conclusions: The current thesis provided novel insights into the unique profile of impairments across different forms of prospection in children with ASD. Further investigations will be needed to clarify how and why specific impairments in these forms of prospection are apparent in children with ASD, specifically whether these impairments may be attributable to common underlying deficits. Future research in this area will be beneficial in contributing to the development of targeted interventions that aim to improve daily functioning in this clinical population.

Early Signs

The article deals with the problem of the effectiveness of correctional work of higher education students with younger students with autism spectrum disorders. The aim of the article is to theoretically substantiate the problem and highlight the results of an empirical study on identifying the level of development of interpersonal interaction skills in primary school children with autism spectrum disorders through the means of theatrical art. The theoretical analysis of the problem has shown that the acquisition of experience of interaction, and skills of contact with children is recognized as one of the priority directions of personality development at the primary school age. In science, communication is considered as the interaction and establishment of contacts between individuals, which results in influencing each other, exchanging information, choosing a certain direction of joint action, as well as perceiving and understanding the interlocutor. It was determined that the artistic and communicative experience gained at the primary school age is a guarantee not only of the child’s general cultural development, but also of his or her liberation, confidence, and personal activity in later life. The emphasis was placed on the fact that theatrical activity proves to be an effective means of socialisation of primary schoolchildren, as it promotes comprehension of the moral implications of a literary work and participation in the game. This form of activity creates favourable conditions for development, focused on the holistic development of the personality of a child with ASD, activation of his/her creativity, and key mental processes. It is emphasised that the solution to the problem will be the implementation of a correctional and developmental program by higher education students aimed at developing interpersonal skills in primary school children with autism spectrum disorders. Under our supervision, students of Oles Honchar Dnipro National University conducted a study of the level of development of interpersonal skills in primary school children with autism spectrum disorders. The study involved primary school children with autism spectrum disorders in grades 1-A: 13 children – experimental group, and 1-B: 14 children – control group. The results of the study allowed higher education students to conclude that the development of interpersonal skills in primary school children with autism spectrum disorders can be successful under conditions of specially organised, systematised, and regular classes in the correctional and developmental program «Young Actors». The empirical study applied methods and strategies for implementing theatrical classes in the educational process with children with autism spectrum disorders. The use of theatrical art helps to improve communication skills, emotional understanding and social adaptation in children with autism spectrum disorders. The results obtained indicate the effectiveness of the correctional work of higher education students with children with autism spectrum disorders. Conclusions have been drawn regarding the effectiveness of the corrective developmental program in shaping interpersonal interaction skills in children with autism spectrum disorders through theatrical art. The practical results of the work can be useful for teachers, psychologists and parents who work with this category of children and seek to improve their quality of life and social interaction. In addition, the educational environment will contribute to social adaptation and the development of interaction skills in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Special Report: Autism Spectrum Disorder and Inflexible Thinking—Affecting Patients Across the Lifespan