Abstract
Few works have addressed the processing of indirect requests in High-Functioning Autism (HFA), and results are conflicting. Some studies report HFA individuals’ difficulties in indirect requests comprehension; others suggest that it might be preserved in HFA. Furthermore, the role of Theory of Mind in understanding indirect requests is an open issue. The goal of this work is twofold: first, assessing whether comprehension of indirect requests for information is preserved in HFA; second, exploring whether mind-reading skills predict this ability. We tested a group of (n = 14; 9–12 years) HFA children and two groups of younger (n = 19; 5–6 years) and older (n = 28; 9–12 years) typically developing (TD) children in a semi-structured task involving direct, indirect and highly indirect requests for information. Results suggested that HFA can understand indirect and highly indirect requests, as well as TD children. Yet, while Theory of Mind skills seem to enhance older TD children understanding, this is not the case for HFA children. Therefore, interestingly, they could rely on different interpretative strategies.
Highlights
The ability to perform and understand indirect speech acts is a core component of pragmatic competence (Searle 1979)
It was found that Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) children complied well with all types of adults’ requests and this was taken as evidence in favor of the fact that Indirect requests (IRs) understanding seems preserved in High-Functioning Autism (HFA) children
Different comprehension patterns emerged depending on group: older typically developing (TD) children were fairly accurate with all types of requests, but still their accuracy was lower for both indirect and highly indirect requests; HFA children exhibited a different pattern: even though correctly interpreting direct and highly indirect requests, they were more accurate with indirect requests; as for younger TD children, instead, no differences emerged based on the type of requests
Summary
The ability to perform and understand indirect speech acts is a core component of pragmatic competence (Searle 1979). A speech act is considered to be indirect when it is conveyed through the performance of another speech act. An utterance such as (1) directly performs the speech act of an assertion and indirectly conveys a request for information. There might be various reasons for requests to be indirect: for the sake of politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987), for greater informativeness (Zufferey 2015) or to be deliberately ambiguous (Pinker 2007). A speaker who utters (2) can indirectly request for a specific information (an address) while explaining the reason for the request (the speaker does not remember it)
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