Coping with the metaphorical meaning of words: a treatment with a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The authors analyze the case of a child (9. 8), conventionally called Lorenzo, with Autism Spectrum Disorder without intellectual disability and adequate basic language abilities, in spite of some weaknesses in figurative language, metaphors in particular. The child showed a marked tendency towards verbal hypercategorization. This study describes Lorenzo's improvement in metaphor comprehension after a specific treatment. Metaphor comprehension was assessed before and after the treatment with two tests, one based on sensory metaphors for children 4-6 and the other, on physical-psychological metaphors, for children 9-14. The child's performance was compared to typically developing (TD) children. At pre-test, there was a significant gap between Lorenzo's and the TDs' performance at both tests. At post-test, the child completely caught up the difference in sensory metaphors, and remarkably improved in physical-psychological metaphors. The discussion focuses on Lorenzo's capability to exploit his tendency towards hypercategorization in order to better analyze the semantic features of metaphors.