Study of Metaphoric and Associative Thinking in Children of Different Age Groups and in Patients with Childhood Autism

The study was performed on 35 healthy children and 9 patients with childhood autism (Asperger's syndrome). It was shown that formation of metaphoric thinking in norm begins as early as at the age of 7–8 years, the ability to understand metaphors decreasing suddenly at the age of 13–15 years. In the patients with childhood autism the inability was revealed of understanding metaphors and idioms widely used in the verbal communication. It is suggested that the deficit of the metaphoric thinking is due to introduction of the logic, theoretical thinking and, hence, to the underlying increased activity of the left hemisphere, as well as to the deficit of the imaginative-metaphoric thinking and to the underlying decreased activity of the right hemisphere. The study of the associative process has shown that the healthy school children have a high degree of association between the words meaning the sensory world of objects. In the patients with autism there were revealed an attenuation of the object association and the predominance of the first names, which indicates the “left-hemispheric” type of the association process.