Scalar inferences in Autism Spectrum Disorders

The researchers predicted autistic participants would draw fewer implicatures. The groups did not differ, and the abstract says so.

Chevallier, C., Wilson, D., Happé, F. & Noveck, I. (2010). Scalar inferences in Autism Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(9), 1104–1117.

Type

Journal article

Find it

doi.org/10.1007/s10803-010-0960-8

Checked

Against the abstract, 16 September 2026

Why it is on the list

A scalar inference is the step from “John or Mary will come” to “not both of them” — an enrichment the words themselves don’t require, since “or” is compatible with both arriving. It is one of the most studied inferences in linguistic pragmatics, which is what makes it a fair test case.

The authors state their prediction in the abstract: because of the reported pragmatic deficits, autistic participants would produce fewer of these enrichments than matched controls. What they report next is contrary to expectations — performance did not differ between the groups, in line with Pijnacker and colleagues (2009).

Week 3 teaches a decoder, and a student could reasonably ask whether the decoder is the thing they are missing. For this inference, in this experiment, the answer was no, and the people who ran it had bet the other way. Hold it at that width: one inference type, one study, two matched groups. It is not a general verdict on pragmatics.