Reading Between the Lines in Autism Spectrum Disorder

解读自闭症谱系障碍的字里行间

• 批准号: ES/W004607/1
• 负责人: Philippa Howard
• 金额: $ 61.56万
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FW004607%2F1
• 关键词: Reading; Between; Lines; Autism; Spectrum

During everyday communication people read between the lines. For example, if somebody was to approach you in the street and ask "do you know where the post-office is?" based on your knowledge, you would assume they are not only asking if you know the post office's location (in which case, a simple answer of "Yes" may suffice), but also that you give them directions to the post-office, even though they did not directly ask you this. This is also true during reading; we frequently make assumptions and read between the lines to aid our understanding of a text. For example, if reading 'Sally forgot her umbrella. Her hair was soaked when she arrived at work' you might assume that it had rained and this had caused Sally's hair to be wet, even though this is not explicitly stated in the text. Reading between the lines is more formally known as inference generation and is something that people seemingly do automatically during reading, to extract unwritten, implicit information from language. Inference generation is critical for effective reading comprehension, communication, and social interactions.Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental condition characterised by restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour (e.g., a strong aversion to change, special interests), difficulties with social interaction and communication (e.g., difficulties with eye contact), and a range of information processing differences (e.g., sensory sensitivities). Autistic individuals are also vulnerable to reading comprehension challenges and this appears to be related to inference generation skill. For example, autistic people are often reported to have difficulties answering questions about a text that requires an inference to be generated, and no current theory of reading or autism can explain this difficulty. Educational practice in relation to literacy instruction is directly informed by scientific understanding of the cognitive (mental) processes that underlie reading. To make current education techniques more effective and appropriate for autistic individuals (e.g., text design or learning tools), and to assure autistic individuals can exploit written methods of communication (e.g., text, email), it is vital to develop scientific understanding of why inference generation is challenging for autistic people. This project will do exactly this - we will use eye tracking, arguably the best methodology to study reading processes, to examine why inference generation may be challenging for autistic adults. As a person reads, they move their eyes approximately 4 times a second, making saccades and fixations. Saccades are fast eyeball rotations that relocate the point of focus from word to word. Fixations are periods between saccades when the eyes remain relatively still for visual information encoding. The duration of fixations and patterns of saccades provide detailed information about how text is processed. We will compare eye movement patterns of autistic and non-autistic readers as they process texts that depict scenarios where inferences must be formed for successful comprehension. We will identify cognitive processing differences causative to inference generation difficulties in ASD. This work will significantly increase scientific understanding of reading in ASD, with the long-term goal of ultimately informing the development of supportive educational and remedial practices, and contributing to the improvement of social inclusion, quality of life, and independence for autistic people. This will be achieved by communicating this work with the scientific community in Journal articles and presentations at national and international conferences. We will also communicate our research findings to stakeholders and the public via online media (website and Twitter) and collaborative events. These events will deliver community perspectives and interdisciplinary insights for future translational steps with respect to the project findings.

在日常交流中，人们会从言外之意中理解。例如，如果有人在街上接近你，问你“你知道邮局在哪里吗？”根据你的知识，你会认为他们不仅在问你是否知道邮局的位置（在这种情况下，一个简单的回答“是”就足够了），而且你还会告诉他们去邮局的方向，即使他们没有直接问你。阅读时也是如此；我们经常做出假设，从字里行间读出来，以帮助我们理解一篇文章。例如，如果阅读“萨利忘记带伞”。当她上班时，她的头发湿透了，你可能会认为下雨了，这导致了莎莉的头发湿了，即使这在文本中没有明确说明。字里行间的阅读更正式地称为推理生成，人们在阅读过程中似乎会自动从语言中提取不成文的隐含信息。推理生成对于有效的阅读理解、交流和社会互动至关重要。自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）是一种发育障碍，其特征是行为模式受限和重复（例如，强烈厌恶改变，特殊兴趣），社交互动和沟通困难（例如，目光接触困难），以及一系列信息处理差异（例如，感官敏感性）。自闭症患者也容易受到阅读理解挑战的影响，这似乎与推理生成技能有关。例如，据报道，自闭症患者经常在回答需要推理的文本问题时遇到困难，而目前的阅读理论或自闭症理论都无法解释这种困难。对阅读背后的认知（心理）过程的科学理解直接影响着与识字教学相关的教育实践。为了使现有的教育技术对自闭症患者更有效和更合适（例如，文本设计或学习工具），并确保自闭症患者可以利用书面交流方法（例如，文本，电子邮件），对为什么推理生成对自闭症患者具有挑战性进行科学理解至关重要。这个项目将完全做到这一点——我们将使用眼动追踪，可以说是研究阅读过程的最佳方法，来研究为什么推理生成可能对自闭症成年人具有挑战性。当一个人阅读时，他们的眼睛大约每秒移动4次，进行扫视和注视。扫视是眼球快速旋转，将焦点从一个单词转移到另一个单词。注视是在扫视之间眼睛保持相对静止以进行视觉信息编码的时期。注视的持续时间和扫视的模式提供了关于文本如何被处理的详细信息。我们将比较自闭症和非自闭症读者在处理描述场景的文本时的眼动模式，这些场景必须形成推理才能成功理解。我们将识别导致ASD推理产生困难的认知加工差异。这项工作将显著增加对自闭症患者阅读的科学理解，其长期目标是最终为支持性教育和补救措施的发展提供信息，并有助于改善自闭症患者的社会包容、生活质量和独立性。这将通过期刊文章和在国家和国际会议上的演讲与科学界进行交流来实现。我们还将通过在线媒体（网站和Twitter）和合作活动向利益相关者和公众传达我们的研究成果。这些活动将提供社区观点和跨学科的见解，为项目发现的未来转化步骤提供参考。