I am interested in knowing whether the ability to transfer properties from one conceptual domain to another is affected in all developmental language disorders regardless of their etiology (i.e. which gene is mutated) or their principal symptomatology (i.e. which components of language are more impaired). Specifically, I wonder if we should expect (or someone has already observed) that people affected by language disorders which do not involve conceptual abilities (i.e. dyslexia) still have problems with metaphor processing. Thanks a lot in advance for your help.
I am studying figurative Language comprehension in Autism Spectrum Disorder and after systematically reviewing the studies I can conclude that although people with ASD experience problems in understanding Language used figuratively (I have studied all forms of figurative langauge), it does not mean that they are unable to understand them. On the contrary, in some studies the participants With ASD have high scores on the figurative Language tests. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions as assessment tools and assessment procedures vary from study to study. In addition, very few studies have considered the possibility that persons with ASD can be differently impaired in different types of figurative Language.
Tamara
To be more precise, the English and French languages tend to promote language disabilities more than other languages. Furthermore, the transfer of a disability in one language tend to cut across the other languages learnt.
Thanks a lot for your interesting replies. My question is related to a hypothesis of mine (and my colleague Cedric Boeckx) (attached) according to which it is cross-modular thinking (e.g. conceptual blending) the hallmark of human cognition. Accordingly, we should expect that this new ability relies on less resilent neuronal networks which are easier to damage (hence the hypothesis that this ability (and specifically, metaphorical processing) is going to be impaired in most or all cognitive disorders).
I do not want to overwhelm you, but I am attaching another paper of mine that I think may be of (more) interest for you. In it we discuss the problem of variation regarding language. The final part contains a characterization of disorders under the lens of Evo-Devo theories. This part tries to answer to an intriguing question: the number of disorders (at the clinical level) is quite small, but the number of aetiological factors is huge.
Best,
Antonio
As a metaphor researcher, my sense of the limited literature on this is, that while some developmental language disorders (SLI - but not necessarily dyslexia) as well as generalized disorders such as ASD lead to impairments in the processing of certain kinds of figurative language. However, none of the research considered the subtleties of what that actually means. Metaphors occur on a spectrum of explicitness and generality and many of them are absolutely central to all language (e.g. using space prepositions for time concepts).
All the examples I've seen investigated seem to involve deficiency in understanding fairly explicitly conventionalized metaphors around social interactions (often expressed through idioms) but not more basic conceptual metaphors. An example of the former may be "lend a helping hand" and the latter "get in trouble". However, there is no strict boundary between these two but I am not aware of any study that investigated this across a range of different individuals with different impairments.
I've addressed some of these issues here http://metaphorhacker.net/2010/08/metaphor-is-my-co-pilot-how-the-literal-and-metaphorical-rely-on-the-same-type-of-knowledge/ but not with relation to developmental disorders.
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