Thesis

Investigating the influence of autistic traits on pragmatic language comprehension

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2012
Thesis identifier
  • T13184
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Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • Pragmatic language impairment is pervasive across the autism spectrum. To date, it is unclear if this deficit reflects information processing anomalies. Extant research has focused predominantly on read and response paradigms (i.e. HappeĢ, 1994), that undoubtedly put autistic participants at a disadvantage. As such, this investigation studied the online (realtime) cognitive processing of figurative language. Participants (N = 70) were members of the public tested for their levels of autistic traits. Following completion of the AQ, participants then took part in a novel self-paced reading task. Pragmatic language competence was inferred from the processing speed of juxtaposed metonymy sentence formulations: literal context, familiar metonymic (LC-FM); metonymic context, non-familiar metonymic (MCNM). Participants were divided into High and Low AQ groups by a median split. An analysis of variance comparing the group's time to process two areas of interest (spillover and last) revealed a significant effect of sentential structure. However, the presence of autistic traits did not yield significant between group effects. Contrary to the literature, participants with high AQ scores were faster to process three of four sentence regions analysed. I argue that pragmatic impairment in autistic traits is highly heterogeneous.
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Note
  • Strathclyde theses - ask staff. Thesis no. : T13184
DOI
Date Created
  • 2012
Former identifier
  • 947579

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