De la production et la compréhension d’énoncés non-littéraux à la catégorisation lexicale : liens et pistes de travail dans le cadre des Troubles du Spectre Autistique.

Abstract

Several studies have shown that typical children produce a large number of semantic verbal approximations – they say “undress an orange” to denote the action of peeling an orange. These non-literal utterances reveal a capacity of structuring verbal lexicon by semantic proximity and play a fundamental role in the construction of lexical categorization. This paper aims to clarify these categorization processes through the productions of this type of utterances in a population of typical children but also through Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), especially the Asperger syndrome : do people with semantic and cognitive rigidity and with difficulties to accede to implicit forms have a problem of categorization ?

Keywords

• Semantic approximation – Categorization – Autism Spectrum Disorder – Rigidity – Typical development