Some (but not all) Pragmatic Inferences are Difficult for Autistic Children

Autism is classically associated with difficulties in pragmatic inferences, resulting in an over-literal interpretation of language. This has mostly been observed with figurative language (e.g., metaphors). In contrast, more recent investigations of another type of inference, scalar implicatures, have mostly failed to spot any difference between autistic and neurotypical individuals, raising concerns about any general claim of pragmatic difficulties in autism. However, both lines of research face issues: language demands rather than pragmatic competence might actually explain group differences on metaphor tasks, and scalar implicatures have mostly been assessed with truth judgment tasks, which might bias their results. This work aims to assess whether this contrast between metaphors and scalars can be observed within a single group of autistic children. A group of autistic children (N = 23) was compared to a larger sample of neurotypical children (N = 237), using innovative scalar implicatures and metaphors tablet tasks that address the methodological concerns raised in the literature. The autistic group showed a reverse contrast from what was expected, with poorer scalar implicature but similar metaphor comprehension, consistently at accuracy and response times levels. We discuss the possibility that, complementary to previous accounts, a dimension opposing guided to spontaneous pragmatic processes might explain this result and the challenges faced by autistic individuals in daily situations.