Scalar Inferences in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

On being told "John or Mary will come", one might infer that not both of them will come. Yet the semantics of "or" is compatible with a situation where both John and Mary come. Inferences of this type, which enrich the semantics of "or" from an 'inclusive' to an 'exclusive' interpretation, have been extensively studied in linguistic pragmatics. However, the phenomenon has not been much explored in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), where pragmatic deficits are commonly reported. Here, we present an experiment investigating these inferences. We predicted that, as a result of the reported pragmatic deficits, participants with ASD would produce fewer inferential enrichments of "or" than matched controls. However, contrary to expectations, but in line with recent findings by Pijnacker et al. (Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39, 607-618, 2009), performances did not differ across groups. This unexpected finding is discussed in light of the literature on pragmatic abilities in autism.

Referring expressions and structural language abilities in children with specific language impairment: A pragmatic tolerance account

“…Norbury, 2005a, b). In line with this suggestion, an increasing number of studies have highlighted that individuals with ASD and age appropriate language scores perform comparably to age-matched TD peers on pragmatic tasks (Norbury, 2005a,b;Pijnacker et al, 2009;Chevallier et al, 2010). Comparing rates of over-and under-informative utterances in different clinical groups will yield novel insights into the underlying skills that support communicative competence.…”

The Contribution of Grammar, Vocabulary and Theory of Mind in Pragmatic Language Competence in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

“…Likewise, it has been demonstrated that children with ASD perform as well as TD peers on the ability to detect pragmatic violations, such as utterances that are literally true but pragmatically under-informative (e.g., “ some of the apples are inside the boxes ” when shown a picture where all of the apples are inside the boxes), and that higher verbal IQ scores predicted higher sensitivity to under-informativeness within the ASD group (Chevallier et al, 2010). Similar conclusions are reached in studies with an adult ASD population (Pijnacker et al, 2009).…”

“…Sensitivity to informativeness, as tested by Chevallier et al (2010), Katsos et al (2011), and Pijnacker et al (2009) is a case in point of “linguistic-pragmatics.” For example, in order to reject pragmatically infelicitous sentences of a speaker saying that “ some of the apples are inside the boxes ” (given a picture in which all of the apples are inside the boxes), a child need to draw on vocabulary knowledge (a child who has mastered the semantic meaning of “some” and “all” will know that “all” is a more informative expression), together with sensitivity to the pragmatic maxim that instructs speakers to avoid being under-informative. However, demands on ToM are minimal, because the knowledge that is necessary to evaluate if the utterance is informative or not is visually accessible and shared between the child and the speaker.…”

The neural computation of scalar implicature

“…Second, despite an explosion of behavioral experiments on scalar implicature (Barner, Brooks, & Bale, 2010; Bonnefon et al, 2009; Bott & Noveck, 2004; Breheny, Ferguson, & Katsos, 2012; Chemla & Spector, 2011; Chevallier et al, 2008; Chevallier, Wilson, Happé, & Noveck, 2010; De Neys & Schaeken, 2007; Feeney, Scrafton, Duckworth, & Handley, 2004; Goodman & Stuhlmuller, 2013; Foppolo, Guasti, & Chierchia, 2012; Grodner et al, 2010; Huang & Snedeker, 2009a, 2009b, 2011; Marty, Chemla & Spector, 2013; Noveck, 2001; Papafragou & Musolino, 2003; Papafragou & Tantalou, 2004; Papafragou, 2006; Pouscoulous, Noveck, Politzer, & Bastide, 2007) relatively little is known about the neural computation of scalar implicature. Two studies have investigated the brain response produced when a scalar implicature conflicts with world knowledge.…”