Table 2.

Summary of studies included in this meta-analysis.

Studies	Tasks	Behavioral results	Conditions	ASD	NCs	ASD>NCs	NCs>ASD
Chouinard et al. (2017)	Literal sentence meaning judgment	Both groups showed metaphorical interference effect.	Metaphor > scrambled metaphor	✓	✓	✓
Colich et al. (2012)	Sentence meaning and scene matching judgment	There was no difference in accuracy between groups. Both groups showed longer RT for ironic remarks.	Ironic scenarios vs. resting-state baseline	✓	✓	✓	✓
Kana and Wadsworth (2012)	Sentence comprehension	No behavioral data was collected.	Pun comprehension vs. fixation			✓
Kim et al. (2018)	Sentence and picture matching judgment	There were no significant differences in RT between NC and ASD children in both M and MM conditions. Participants with ASD showed significantly lower accuracy than NC only in the MM condition.	Metaphorical meaning vs. literal meaning				✓
Wang et al. (2006)	Sincere/ironic sentence meaning judgment	Event outcome + prosodic cues (sincere/sarcastic): the accuracy of NCs was higher than that of ASD group; prosodic cues only: there was no difference in accuracy between the two groups; Under both conditions, there was no difference in RT between the two groups.	Event outcome + prosodic cues (sincere/sarcastic)/ prosodic cues only vs. resting-state baseline	✓	✓	✓
Wang et al. (2007)	Sentence meaning and scene matching judgment	There were no significant differences in RT and accuracy between groups.	Ironic vs. control scenarios	✓	✓	✓	✓

ASD, autism spectrum disorder; NCs, neurotypical controls; RT, response time; M, matched; MM, mismatched.