How Autism and Sex Influence Perspective-Taking in Pragmatic Inferences

PURPOSE: Despite difficulties with pragmatic inferences which require perspective-taking, autistic individuals often perform similarly to non-autistic peers on scalar implicatures tasks. Prior studies often used artificial tasks lacking a rich communicative context, or clear interlocutor, potentially misrepresenting autistic performance. They have also underrepresented females, who may outperform males on pragmatic measures. This study aims to address both limitations. METHODS: 52 autistic and 52 non-autistic adults (balanced for sex) completed an implicature priming task with both lexical (e.g. interpreting "John ate some of the cookies" as "some but not all") and ad-hoc scalar implicatures (e.g., "the bowl with an apple" meaning "only an apple" when another bowl contains an apple and an orange). This task was an online card-selection game with clues either provided by a cooperative and knowledgeable "interlocutor" or simply appearing on the screen. RESULTS: Reliable priming effects occurred across groups and implicature types, showing that autistic adults, like non-autistic adults, flexibly interpret scalar terms in context. Speaker presence interacted with sex: while autistic males made fewer implicatures in the speaker-present condition, autistic females, like non-autistic participants, made more implicatures; they nonetheless showed longer reaction times. CONCLUSION: Communicative context and sex both shape pragmatic performance in autism. Autistic females may reach similar interpretations to non-autistic people by using effortful compensatory strategies, whereas autistic males may be more affected by the extra demands of reasoning about a speaker's mental states and intentions. The findings underscore the value of realistic, inclusive designs in pragmatic research and looking at the sexes separately.