The eyes are faster than the hand in figurative language interpretation

What is it about?

What strategies do language users rely on when deciding on the interpretation of non-literal language? And do we find any differences between typical individuals and individuals on the autism spectrum where the understanding of non-literal language is impaired? Can studying their eye and hand movements when listening and reading such expressions reveal those strategies? This was the main goal in the current study. Our results suggest that individuals with autism have different processing patterns than typically developing peers when interpreting figurative language, even when they provide the correct answers. Both children with and without autism, and participants with autism display greater uncertainty and competition between alternatives when providing the answer, and often also consider the literal interpretation of the expression against its intended non-literal meaning. We provide evidence that expression transparency and de-composability play a central role in figurative language processing across all groups, and that sometimes even transparent expressions can pose a difficulty in comprehension, especially for the participants with autism and for younger typical participants.

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Why is it important?

This is the first study to simultaneously collect evidence from both gaze- and hand-behaviour in a task involving non-literal language, comparing two age groups of participants, from two population samples. We provide evidence that participants would first inspect a number of options with their eyes, before making a motor decision with the mouse. Furthermore, there is little overlap in the alternatives which appear relevant for the gaze inspection and for the motor decision. Finally, we show that expression transparency is not always an advantage in non-literal language comprehension. For a theoretical discussion see also Vulchanova et al. (2019) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10849-019-09282-7

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