Right hemisphere dysfunction and metaphor comprehension in young adults with asperger syndrome

Rinat Gold; Miriam Faust

doi:10.1007/s10803-009-0930-1

Right hemisphere dysfunction and metaphor comprehension in young adults with asperger syndrome

Rinat Gold, Miriam Faust

Department of Psychology

Bar-Ilan University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

66 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study examined whether the known difficulties in metaphor comprehension exhibited by persons with Asperger syndrome (AS) can be explained by a dysfunctional right hemisphere (RH). Using the divided visual field paradigm, 27 AS participants and 36 matched controls were presented with word pairs of four types (literal, conventional metaphors, novel metaphors, and unrelated word pairs), and were asked to perform a semantic judgment task. The main hypothesis was that whereas the control group participants will show RH superiority for novel metaphor processing, no RH superiority will be found in the AS group. Results indeed indicate much less RH contribution to novel metaphor comprehension in AS, and are discussed in light of linguistic models and the neurobiology of autism.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	800-811
Number of pages	12
Journal	Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
Volume	40
Issue number	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0930-1
State	Published - Jul 2010

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Chen Klein-man, Efrat Levitan and Adi Yust for the useful assistance in conducting the experiments. The authors thank the Asperger syndrome research participants and their families for their cooperation and interest in this study. The authors thank the Israel Asperger Syndrome Association and Beit Ekstein organization for their assistance in recruiting the Asperger syndrome participants. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) grant (number 724/09) to Miriam Faust.

Funding

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Chen Klein-man, Efrat Levitan and Adi Yust for the useful assistance in conducting the experiments. The authors thank the Asperger syndrome research participants and their families for their cooperation and interest in this study. The authors thank the Israel Asperger Syndrome Association and Beit Ekstein organization for their assistance in recruiting the Asperger syndrome participants. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) grant (number 724/09) to Miriam Faust.

Funders	Funder number
Israel Science Foundation	724/09

Keywords

Asperger syndrome
Hemispheres
Metaphors
Semantic processing
Visual fields

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abstract = "This study examined whether the known difficulties in metaphor comprehension exhibited by persons with Asperger syndrome (AS) can be explained by a dysfunctional right hemisphere (RH). Using the divided visual field paradigm, 27 AS participants and 36 matched controls were presented with word pairs of four types (literal, conventional metaphors, novel metaphors, and unrelated word pairs), and were asked to perform a semantic judgment task. The main hypothesis was that whereas the control group participants will show RH superiority for novel metaphor processing, no RH superiority will be found in the AS group. Results indeed indicate much less RH contribution to novel metaphor comprehension in AS, and are discussed in light of linguistic models and the neurobiology of autism.",

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Right hemisphere dysfunction and metaphor comprehension in young adults with asperger syndrome

Abstract

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