Which characteristic is most closely associated with ASD and explains misinterpretation of sarcasm and humor?

• A. Impaired phonological processing
• B. Difficulty with prosody
• C. Deficits in pragmatic language
• D. Enhanced nonverbal reasoning

Answer: (C)

Understanding sarcasm and humor requires using language in social contexts—recognizing everyone's intent, the implied meaning behind words, and how tone and context change what is being said. This ability is called pragmatic language. In ASD, pragmatic language skills are often impaired, so individuals may interpret statements literally and miss the intended humor or sarcasm because they don’t reliably pick up on nonliteral cues or social nuance.

While prosody deals with the rhythm and tone of speech and can influence how someone perceives meaning, the broader and more consistent difficulty in social use of language that defines pragmatic language explains why sarcasm, humor, and other nonliteral expressions are frequently misunderstood. Phonological processing is about sound structure and decoding words, which doesn’t directly account for misinterpreting intent in social communication, and enhanced nonverbal reasoning isn’t typically linked to this specific challenge.