比喩皮肉文テスト（MSST）を用いた自閉症スペクトラム障害（ASD）児童と通常学級児童の比較検討

抄録

A significant characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is communication disorder. Children with ASD have difficulty understanding jokes and sarcasm compared to ordinary children, while they are intellectually comparable. This study compared ASD children (N=147, FIQs 75 or higher in WISC - III or IV) with ordinary children (N=593), on the Metaphor and Sarcasm Scenario Test (MSST: Koeda, Adachi, Takeshita, 2000). Results indicated that regardless of ASD, children in upper grades were more able to understand metaphor, and that male children with ASD achieved higher metaphor scores than female, while no such difference was found for ordinary children. ASD children were more likely to interpret sarcasms literally. ASD children also showed stronger correlation between VCI (VIQ) and the metaphor score, while that between sarcasm score and IQ was weak. This suggests that ASD children have a hard time understanding sarcasm accurately desspite their IQ.