ABSTRACT
Objective:To explore that if the weak central coherence cognitive characteristic exist in metaphor semantic integration and how does it change through the familiarity of metaphor in the adults with high functioning autism (HFA).Methods:Totally 20 adults with HFA from a service institution of autistic disorder and their 20 typically developing (TD) peers from ordinary schools were recruited into present study who were matched on intelligence quotient (IQ).Priming task was used in present study,in which were set two groups of metaphor sentences (novel-metaphor sentences,conventional-metaphor sentences) as priming sentences and four groups of word (metaphor-relationship-explaining word,vehicle-relevance word,irrelevant word,pseudo words) as target words.A recognition task was used to support the results of priming task.Results:HFA adults showed the highest processing efficiency of vehicle-relevance word in the novel-metaphor and conventional-metaphor priming conditions,the reaction time were (960.7 ±9.7) ms and (747.5 ± 12.8) ms,and the accuracies were 94.8％ and 98.4％.TD adults showed the highest processing efficiency of metaphor-relationship-explaining word in the novel-metaphor and conventional-metaphor priming conditions,the reaction time were (817.4 ± 9.0) ms and (619.5 ± 9.9) ms,and the accuracies were 93.3％ and 98.2％.In recognition tasks,HFA adults showed the highest recognition efficiency of vehicle-relevance word in the novel-metaphor and conventional-metaphor conditions,the reaction time were (732.2 ±11.9) ms and (788.8 ± 11.7) ms,and the accuracies were 78.9％ and 81.8％.TD adults showed the highest recognition efficiency of metaphor-relationship-explaining word in the novel-metaphor and conventional-metaphor conditions,the reaction time were (694.0 ± 10.8) ms and 696.1 ± 11.2)ms,and the accuracies were 76.7％ and 84.2％.Conclusion:It suggests that HFA adults have weak central coherence cognitive processing characteristic on the deep semantic processing level such as metaphor,and this kind of characteristic would get more obvious from conventional-metaphor to novel-metaphor.