| Description |
Central coherence has been described as the tendency of the normal cognitive system to experience an unconscious drive for coherence or meaning when processing stimuli. Considerable evidence suggests that individuals with autism are less efficient at using contextual information to make inferences and to extract global meaning. This processing style has been termed weak central coherence. It has also been suggested that individuals with autism lack a theory of mind, or the cognitive ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others, and to understand that other individuals have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own. This study tested assumptions of both theory of mind and weak central coherence theory with respect to the role of context in idiom comprehension in individuals with and without autism using eye tracking technology. Participants were recruited from the Utah Autism Research Program at the University of Utah and from the surrounding community. Participants with autism were assessed with two measurements: (a) Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised and (b) Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Generic. Participants met the criteria for autism. Eye gaze was recorded using an Applied Sciences Laboratory EyeHead Integration system while the participants read passages containing an idiom that was preceded by context that was either neutral or biased toward the intended meaning of an idiom presented later in the text. A subsequent target sentence contained the idiom, followed by a phrase that disambiguated the idiom towards either its literal or figurative meaning. Both first pass and second pass reading times were recorded for the idiom and disambiguating phrase. Both groups appeared to use contextual information to similar degrees in processing idioms. Although context facilitated comprehension of the idiom in its figurative sense for both groups, participants with autism experienced stronger and longer lasting comprehension difficulty when presented with the figuration interpretation of idioms. |
