ABSTRACT
Perspective taking has been proposed to be impaired in persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially when implicit processing is required. In narrative texts, language perception and interpretation is fundamentally guided by taking the perspective of a narrator. We studied perspective taking in the linguistic domain of so-called Free Indirect Discourse (FID), during which certain text segments have to be interpreted as the thoughts or utterances of a protagonist without explicitly being marked as thought or speech representations of that protagonist (as in direct or indirect discourse). Crucially, the correct interpretation of text segments as FID depends on the ability to detect which of the protagonists "stands out" against the others and is therefore identifiable as implicit thinker or speaker. This so-called "prominence" status of a protagonist is based on linguistic properties (e.g., grammatical function, referential expression), in other words, the perspective is "hidden" and has to be inferred from the text material. In order to test whether this implicit perspective taking ability that is required for the interpretation of FID is preserved in persons with ASD, we presented short texts with three sentences to adults with and without ASD. In the last sentence, the perspective was switched either to the more or the less prominent of two protagonists. Participants were asked to rate the texts regarding their naturalness. Both diagnostic groups rated sentences with FID anchored to the less prominent protagonist as less natural than sentences with FID anchored to the more prominent protagonist. Our results that the high-level perspective taking ability in written language that is required for the interpretation of FID is well preserved in persons with ASD supports the conclusion that language skills are highly elaborated in ASD so that even the challenging attribution of utterances to protagonists is possible if they are only implicitly given. We discuss the implications in the context of claims of impaired perspective taking in ASD as well as with regard to the underlying processing of FID.
ABSTRACT
Patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders experience severe difficulties in interpersonal communication, as described by traditional psychopathology and current research on social cognition. From a linguistic perspective, pragmatic abilities are crucial for successful communication. Empirical studies have shown that these abilities are significantly impaired in this group of patients. Prosody, the tone of voice with which words and sentences are pronounced, is one of the most important carriers of pragmatic meaning and can serve a range of functions from linguistic to emotional ones. Most of the existing literature on prosody of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders focuses on the expression of emotion, generally showing significant impairments. By contrast, the use of non-emotional prosody in these patients is scarcely investigated. In this paper, we first present a linguistic model to classify prosodic functions. Second, we discuss existing studies on the use of non-emotional prosody in these patients, providing an overview of the state of the art. Third, we delineate possible future lines of research in this field, also taking into account some classical psychopathological assumptions, for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.
