Irony and autism: a preliminary study of the impact of visual stimulus (Ironía y autismo: un estudio preliminar del impacto de los estímulos visuales)

ABSTRACT This study investigates whether autistic participants are able to respond in a similar way to neurotypical (NT) participants in a novel visual irony task presented in an app format, and whether their verbal abilities can affect its comprehension. Twenty British children between eight and 16 years old — nine of them with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders, ASD, and 11 NT — completed the tasks. A second group also emerged due to their verbal IQ. Autistic children were able to understand the fundamental basis of irony presented in a visual format. This design, based on visual forced-choice response that shows all the information at once, would be a suitable format to focus the attention of autistic individuals on important details and therefore decrease the working memory load.