A Literature Research On Figurative Language Comprehension Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Since 1990 s,with the increase in the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD)worldwide,the language problems found in children with ASD have also received growing attention from researchers,who found that many children with ASD showed deficits in the comprehension of figurative language compared with typicallydeveloping children.In order to explore the reasons for this phenomenon,and to help children with ASD enhance their ability to integrate into social communication,a succession of research has been carried out from multiple dimensions.At present,there are not many related studies in China,which need to be explored in depth.This dissertation thus aims to sort out these research documents,to summarize achievements and limitations,and finally to provide suggestions for future researchers and special educators.This dissertation uses Cite Space to analyze the number of articles,authors,and citation index of the collected research literature on the comprehension of figurative language of children with ASD.It can be found that as the volume of literature published around this topic increases,the research fields involved are also expanding,and the topic has developed into multidisciplinary research in relation to linguistics,psychology,cognition,brain science,and neurology.The main concern at the beginning of this topic is still being discussed,and the executive function and the expansion of the scope of investigation from metaphors and irony to other figurative languages may become hotspots and trends in the future.with reference to the aggregation habits of different figurative languages in previous studies,and characteristics of thinking and the degree of similarity between each figurative language,these studies are divided into four types,including metaphoric type,ironic type,hyperbolic type and other types.The major studies of each type are subsequently summarized.Through the analysis of the retrieved literature,it was found that the four types of figurative language received different attention;and the comprehension of figurative language by children with ASD varies with different types,or the same type with different subcategories of figurative language.Generally speaking,the possible reasons include defects in mental cognitive ability,executive ability or core language skills.Research analysis shows that researchers tend to come to different conclusions about the same problem,and we attribute this to the following reasons: 1)the differences between the language itself and different figurative languages;2)the diversification of experimental methods and experimental tasks;3)the individual differences of the subjects themselves.These differences and the inherent requirements for perfecting the research on this topic all show that future research should be generalized and at the same time more detailed.As this issue has not yet been finalized,more research is still needed.This dissertation proposes the following suggestions for further investigations: 1)Using new tools and theories to carry out research,and strictly controlling the unfavorable variables to re-verify the research that still has differences.2)Equal attention should be paid to other related disciplines and correlative populations,and the research scope should be expanded.3)Carrying out continuous and regular follow-up research.On the one hand,the adverse effects on the conclusions caused by different subjects can therefore be compensated;on the other hand,the training program can be adjusted in time according to the feedback in the actual intervention.The advice for special educators is to use a variety of prompts and teaching strategies according to the characteristics of each individual,insist on long-term repeated interventions,and pay attention to timely positive feedback.