Abstract
The importance of providing perceptive assessment for autistic children with language disabilities has been recognized. However, little attention has been given to the contributing role of perception of metaphoric expressions in the effectiveness of social interactions for autistic children. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between child features, caregiver features, metaphoric disability, and perceptive assessment by examining associations between child features,caregivers’ features, and autistic children's metaphoric disability to fully perceive metaphoric expressions involving vehicle, tenor, and ground (VTG) and word, idiom, sentence (WIS) in a sample of 117 autistic children showing signs of metaphoric disabilities. The results indicated that improvements in metaphoric abilities through inhibition of return (IOR) had a significant impact on the relationship between metaphoric features (i.e., WIS) and children's performance. Additionally, our findings discovered that there were positive associations between caregivers' features and perception to WIS and VTG for the effectiveness of social communications. These findings have critical implications in improving autistic children's language quality of vividness and aesthetics by appropriately using metaphoric expressions, curing their communication disorders (e.g., stay-alone, passive communication, timidity in social communication), and helping them rehabilitate from autism through metaphoric training.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article is made available by the authors, without undue reservation. All the data can be accessed in Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml? persistentId = doi%3A10.7910%2FDVN%2FMGYJFP&version = DRAFT).
References
Adams, E., Lampinen, L., Zheng, T., Sullivan, V., Taylor, L., & Bishop, L. (2023). Associations between social activities and depressive symptoms in adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder: Testing the indirect effects of loneliness. Autism, 19(3), 46–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613231173859
Aloni, R., Shahar, G., Ben-Ari, A., Margalit, D., & Achiron, A. (2022). Negative and positive personification of multiple sclerosis: Role in psychological adaptation. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 164(1), 46–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2022.111078
Amuda, Y., Chikhaoui, E., Hassan, S., & Dhali, M. (2022). Qualitative Exploration of Legal, Economic and Health Impacts of Covid-19 in Saudi Arabia. Emerging Science Journal, 6(1), 1–14.
Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Skinner, R., Martin, J., & Clubley, E. (2001). The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ): Evidence from Asperger syndrome/ high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005653411471
Bontinck, C., Warreyn, P., Meirsschaut, M., & Roeyers, H. (2018). Parent-Child Interaction in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and their siblings: Choosing a Coding Strategy. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27(1), 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0877-3
Brantlinger, E., Jimenez, R., Klingner, J., Pugach, M., & Richardson, V. (2005). Qualitative studies in special education. Exceptional Children, 71(1), 195–207. https://doi.org/10.1177/001440290507100205
Cielinski, K. L., Vaughn, B. E., Seifer, R., & Contreras, J. (1995). Relations among sustained engagement during play, quality of play, and mother-child interaction in samples of children with Down Syndrome and normal developing toddlers. Infant Behavior and Development, 18, 163–176.
Clarke, H. (2022). “It Was and It Was Not”: Metaphoric Tension in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Review, 109(2), 121–150. https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2022.109.2.121
Creswell, C., & Halliday, G. (2022). Parent-led cognitive behaviour therapy for autistic child anxiety problems: Overcoming challenges to increase access to effective treatment. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 6, 1–21.
Dissanayake, C., Searles, J., Barbaro, J., Sadka, N., & Lawson, L. P. (2019). Cognitive and behavioral differences in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder from multiplex and simplex families. Autism Research, 12(4), 682–693. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2074
Escamilla, R. (2023). Whose Satan? US Mainstream Media Depictions of the Satanic Temple, Discourse & Society, 34(1), 54–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221145094
Flippin, M., & Watson, L. R. (2018). teacher-student broad autism phenotype and the language skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 48(6), 1895–1907. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3431-7
Flurie, M., Kelly, A., Olson, I. R., & Reilly, J. (2022). SymCog: An open-source toolkit for assessing human symbolic cognition. Behavior Research Methods, 55(2), 807–823. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-01853-0
Henry, J. D., & Crawford, J. R. (2005). The short-form version of the Depression anxiety stress scales (DASS-21): Construct validity and normative data in a large non-clinical sample. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44(2), 227–239. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466505X29657
Hilchey, M., Rajsic, J., & Pratt, J. (2020). When do response-related episodic retrieval effects co-occur with inhibition of return? Perception. Perception & Psychophysics, 82(6), 3013–3032. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-020-02020-3
Hofler, M., & Kieslinger, T. (2022). Inhibition of Return in Visual Search Does Not Rely on Spatial Working Memory. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 18(1), 20–26. https://doi.org/10.5709/acp-0343-y
Hurley, R. S. E., Losh, M., Parlier, M., Reznick, J. S., & Piven, J. (2007). The broad autism phenotype questionnaire. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37(9), 1679–1690. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0299-3
Ifantidou, E., & Piata, A. (2021). Metaphor and mental shortcuts: The role of non-propositional effects. Pragmatics & Cognition, 28(2), 299–320. https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21009.ifa
Johnson, M. H. (2011). Interactive specialization: A domain-general framework for human functional brain development? Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 1(1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2010.07.003
Junaedi, F., Hanurawan, F., Setiyowati, A., & Ramli, M. (2022). Reducing the New Inmates’ Anxiety through Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy with Patronage Counseling Technique. Emerging Science Journal, 6(2), 306–321. https://doi.org/10.28991/ESJ-2022-06-02-08
Kamber, E., Mazachowsky, T., & Mahy, C. (2022). The Emergence and Development of Future-Oriented Cognition in Toddlerhood: The Contribution of Cognitive and Language Abilities. Journal of Cognition and Development, 23(6), 39–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2022.2149527
Kazemian, R., & Hatamzadeh, S. (2022). COVID-19 in English and Persian: A Cognitive Linguistic Study of Illness Metaphors across Languages. Metaphor and Symbol, 37(2), 152–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2021.1994839
Kim, S. Y., Cheon, J. E., Gillespie-Lynch, K., Grandits, J., & Kim, Y. H. (2023). Explicit stigma and implicit biases toward autism in South Korea versus the United States. Autism, 27(5), 1492–1507. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221140695
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. The university of Chicago press.
Landau, M., Arndt, J., & Cameron, L. (2018). Do metaphors in health messages work? Exploring emotional and cognitive factors. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 74(3), 135–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.09.006
Losh, M., & Piven, J. (2007). Social-cognition and the broad autism phenotype: Identifying genetically meaningful phenotypes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(1), 105–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01594.x
Madigan, S., Prime, H., Graham, S. A., Rodrigues, M., Anderson, N., Khoury, J., & Jenkins, J. M. (2019). Parenting behavior and child language: A Meta-analysis. Pediatrics, 144(4), 38–49. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-3556
Marleau, I., Vona, M., Gagner, C., Luu, T. M., & Beauchamp, M. H. (2021). Social cognition, adaptive functioning, and behavior problems in preschoolers born extremely preterm. Child Neuropsychology, 27(1), 96–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/09297049.2020.1797656
Martín-Arévalo, E., Kingstone, A., & Lupiáñez, J. (2013). Is “Inhibition of Return” due to the inhibition of the return of attention? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66(2), 347–359.
Michalczyk, L., & Bielas, J. (2019). The gap effect reduces both manual and saccadic inhibition of return (IOR). Experimental Brain Research, 237(7), 1643–1653. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-019-05537-8
Mueller, R., & Moskowitz, L. J. (2020). Positive Family Intervention for children with ASD: Impact on Parents’ Cognitions and Stress. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29(12), 3536–3551. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01830-1
Neil, L., Olsson, N. C., & Pellicano, E. (2016). The relationship between intolerance of uncertainty, sensory sensitivities, and anxiety in autistic and typically developing children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(6), 1962–1973. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-016-2721-9
Nurhayati, S., Agus, N., Safuri, M., Reny, J., Wamaungo, J., & Abdu, A. (2022). Digital Literacy Workshop Training Model for Child Parenting in a Fourth Industrial Era. HighTech And Innovation Journal, 3(3), 297–305. https://doi.org/10.28991/HIJ-2022-03-03-05
Onishi, K., & Murphy, G. (1993). Metaphoric reference: When metaphors are not understood as easily as literal expressions. Memory & Cognition, 21(6), 763–772. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202744
Papista, Z. (2022). Conceptual metaphor in trading card games: The case of Yu-Gi-Oh! Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 20(2), 504–529. https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00120.pap
Qin, H. R. (2021). Modern Chinese Dictionary of Metaphors. Peking University Press.
Salomonsson, B. (2022). Psychoanalysis with adults inspired by parent-infant psychotherapy: The analyst’s metaphoric function. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 103(4), 601–618. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2021.2010560
Schmidt, W. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 129–158. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/11.2.129
Schopper, L., & Frings, C. (2023). Inhibition of return (IOR) meets stimulus-response (S-R) binding: Manually responding to central arrow targets is driven by S-R binding, not IOR. Visual Cognition, 45(1), 78–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2023.2169802
Takimoto, M. (2021). A comparative study of animation versus static effects in the spatial concept-based metaphor awareness-raising approach on EFL learners’ cognitive processing of request strategies. Language and Cognition, 13(2), 191–226. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2020.34
Tseng, M., & Chuang, S. (2022). Metaphor and creativity in the act of making her heart flutter: Toward a cognitive-emotive perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 19(1), 194–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.01.013
Ventalon, G., Erjavec, G., & Tijus, C. (2020). Processing visual metaphors in advertising: An exploratory study of metaphoric disabilities. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 32(8), 816–826. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2020.1817038
Wan, M. W., Green, J., Elsabbagh, M., Johnson, M. H., Plummer, F., & Charman, T. (2013). Quality of interaction between at-risk infants and caregiver at 12–15 months is associated with 3-year autism outcome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(7), 763–771. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12032
Funding
National Social Science Project of China (A Study on the Validity Verification Model of Digitally Empowered Foreign Language Writing Assessment, 2023.
Zhejiang Social Science Project(A Study on the Validity Verification Model of Digitally Empowered Foreign Language Writing Assessment, 2023.
Major Humanities and Social Sciences Research Projects in Zhejiang higher education institutions (2023QN041).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethical approval
Approval was granted by the xxx Ethical Committee.
Consent to participate
Informed consent was obtained from all the participants.
Conflict of interest
The authors have no potential conficts of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Ke, Y., Zhou, X. Perceptive assessment for metaphoric disability in autistic children: an inhibition-of-return approach. Curr Psychol 43, 51–61 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05324-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05324-3