An Analysis of The Mandarin-Speaking Children with High-Functioning Autism’s Competence Deficit in Metaphor and Metonymy

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a typical neurogenic disorder that manifests in children.The symptoms mainly affect the social communication skills, as well as restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. Compared to the typically developing (TD) children, the largest difference of High-Functioning Autism (HFA) children is pragmatic inference abilities when they use languages. Based on this, the aspects of metaphor and metonymy, the two vital approaches of human cognitive capabilities and the creativity of language may serve as a potential solution helping both HFA and ASD children to overcome social impairments. This research aims at concluding the competence deficit of HFA children whose first language is Chinese in two important rhetorical devices, metaphor and metonymy. Moreover, the author tries to give advice on improving methods of those children’s insufficient abilities the article finds. Furthermore, the author also attempts to provide feasible improvement methods for the children's ability deficiencies discovered in the existing research. By means of studying the brain regions involved in metaphor and metonymy, promoting more efficient therapies for enhancing the pragmatic abilities of children with HFA is promising.