The Role of the Brain's Pragmatic Language Network in Reading Comprehension in Autistic Children

Abstract

One of the earliest and commonly reported symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a delay in language development. Such delay may sometimes accompany deficits which can have a long-term impact on reading comprehension. It is frequently reported that autistic children exhibit significant difficulties in pragmatics, which is the communicative use of language. While the focus of most studies on reading has been on comprehension, some have proposed a positive correlation between reading and pragmatics. Nevertheless, the neural mechanisms that underpin pragmatic language in autism remain poorly understood. The objective of this functional MRI study is to examine the differences in the brain's Pragmatic Network (PN) during two levels of reading tasks in autistic and neurotypical (NT) children. The study included children aged 8–13 years (VA task = 26 ASD and 15 NT; MS task = 25 ASD and 15 NT). The results demonstrate that while both groups engaged the PN, the ASD participants exhibited additional recruitment of PN areas that overlapped with language processing, contextual integration of linguistic information, and theory of mind. Furthermore, the ASD group, but not the NT group, showed a correlation between the percentage of signal change and reading comprehension. In addition to underscoring the role of the PN in reading comprehension, these findings point to increased engagement of the PN in autism.