Association between the degree of autism and permissiveness of pragmatic impairments in Japanese-speaking adults with and without autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Twenty-seven pragmatic skills and social engagement sub-items and 7 language structure sub-items from the Communication Checklist – Adult were rated by 124 typically developing (TD) adults and 29 adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on a 5-point scale. The results indicated that the higher the score of the TD adults on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), the more they evaluated pragmatic impairments as non-problematic; however, no correlation was found between their AQ score and evaluation of language impairments. In contrast, the higher the score of the adults with ASD on the AQ, the more they evaluated both pragmatic and language impairments as problematic. The relationships between AQ scores and the permissiveness of pragmatic impairments in adults are discussed.