Difficulties related to figurative language processing are commonly observed among autistic individuals. However both the extent and the exact source of these difficulties remain controversial. We reviewed studies from the last decade examining the processing of different subtypes of nonliteral language in ASD, including metaphors, idioms and verbal irony with a focus on the role of ToM, language abilities, and EFs in figurative language comprehension. This review highlights the importance of using low-verbal nonliteral language tasks and argues that ToM, language skills, and EFs may have independent contributions to autistic individuals' ability to process nonliteral forms of language.

Relatives of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may display milder but qualitatively similar traits known as the broader autism phenotype (BAP). Current knowledge of the BAP is limited and methods to assess traits are not well established. This study aimed to characterize the BAP based on objective measures of social skills. This can allow the identification of BAP traits that indicate genetic risk for ASD in families with many individuals with ASD or the BAP. We studied recognition of socially inappropriate behavior and language (a faux pas) as our objective measure of social cognition, and verbal fluency in social conversation as our objective measure of language pragmatics in 25 individuals with the BAP compared to 33 neurotypical participants. Individuals with the BAP showed atypical social cognition with reduced ability to recognize a faux pas, as well as altered language pragmatics with decreased verbal fluency. We then examined social cognition in 34 families (159 members) with ASD and the BAP. Across all families, autistic individuals showed the weakest faux pas recognition, followed by those with the BAP and relatives without autistic traits compared to community controls. This inherited pattern of graded difficulties in social cognition suggests that atypical faux pas recognition may be a marker of genetic risk for ASD. This may facilitate studies investigating the genetic causes of ASD by providing researchers with objective markers of the BAP to better understand neurodivergence in this population.

Difficulties in retrieving memories of specific events are well documented in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although it is commonly thought that these difficulties arise from a deficit in ASD individuals' social cognitive abilities, a growing literature suggests that a separate, parallel deficit also exists in the ability to mentally reconstruct aspects of the space, or scene, in which a remembered event occurred. In this review, we discuss what is known about the scene construction deficit in ASD and how its consideration might impact future research.