Miten autismikirjon henkilöt ja verrokit kuvailevat ja esittävät toisen henkilön ajatuksia

This paper examines participants’ responses to questions regarding the thoughts of anotherperson. The data is drawn from semi-structured interviews with 56 young adults, 26 of whomhave been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Thee interviews are in Finnish. The focusof this study is on linguistic means used by the participants in a task in which they are askedto watch a video clip and then tell what one of the characters is thinking. A common type ofresponse to the latter question is an assertion, such as noo (.) se oli selvasti kiinnostunu siita(2.0) kurssista ja (.) siita mita siella tehdaan ja ’well, she was clearly interested in the courseand what it’s all about and’, which names the thought (e.g., kiinnostunu ‘interested’). Theresponses also include demonstrations, such as kuulostaapa tosi hauskalta kurssilta haluanpaitsekin mukaan sinne ‘ at sounds like a fun course. I think I’d like to join.’ The study showsthat individuals on the autism spectrum and control group members use similar linguisticmeans in their reported speech utterances.Most demonstrations in the data are combined with an assertion or other markers that showa deictic shi between the reported speech situation and the situation here-and-now. Twoindividuals on the autism spectrum, however, use a rare type of ‘bare demonstration’ whichis not linguistically tied to the situation here-and-now. We pose a hypothesis that this mayre ect some di culty of individuals on the autism spectrum in processing the complexparticipation framework in a reported thought situation. In this part, ‘bare demonstrations’resemble repetitive speech of children on the autism spectrum, which also re ects di cultyin intersubjective processing and interactional deictics. However, bare demonstrations arenot reproductions of something the speaker has heard but, instead, a creation of the speaker’sown imagination.