« Un chat dans la gorge » : comprendre le langage figuré quand on est autiste

Abstract

In the autism spectrum disorder, difficulties in understanding figurative language have been widely documented in the scientific literature. This review aims to examine the state of current knowledge by focusing specifically on the understanding of idiomatic expressions. Due to their semantic opacity and conventional nature, these expressions cannot be understood from the sole literal meaning of the words that compose them. This review explores the information processing strategies favored by autistic people to understand idioms and put them into perspective with the underlying cognitive mechanisms, including central coherence, executive functions and theory of mind. What should be retained from this synthesis is that the understanding of idiomatic expressions in individuals with autism relies on a complex interaction between their linguistic abilities and their capacity to integrate contextual information, a process influenced by their cognitive particularities. Finally, the interest of integrating these tasks into clinical assessments is discussed to refine the analysis of pragmatic skills and to propose educational and therapeutic interventions targeting the improvement of the use of context and inference strategies.