Right hemisphere dysfunction and metaphor comprehension in young adults with Asperger syndrome.
Adults with Asperger syndrome lean on the left brain for new metaphors, so they need plain, literal language at work and school.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Gold et al. (2010) asked adults with Asperger syndrome to read new metaphors.
Each person saw half the sentences on the left side of a screen and half on the right.
The team then checked which side of the brain each adult used to make sense of the phrases.
What they found
Typical adults used the right side of the brain for fresh metaphors.
Adults with Asperger syndrome did not.
Their right side stayed quiet, so they had more trouble grasping the hidden meaning.
How this fits with other research
A PET study by Feldman et al. (1999) also saw odd brain sides in autistic adults.
They found language flipped to the opposite side, backing the idea that wiring differs.
Mueller et al. (2000) showed the same group remembers facts but not events.
Together the papers paint one picture: the brain organizes language and memory in its own way in ASD.
Why it matters
If a client misses jokes, slogans, or social hints, the issue may be metaphor processing, not stubbornness.
Swap lofty figures of speech for clear, literal words.
Add visual cues or written rules to support the message.
These small changes cut confusion and boost cooperation in work or college settings.
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02At a glance
03Original 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.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2010 · doi:10.1007/s10803-009-0930-1