Editorial: Rethinking figurative language in neurodevelopmental disorders: Theoretical challenges stemming from intervention

The idea that inspired this Research Topic was to go beyond the state of the art concerning figurative language competencies in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. In the 90’s of past century, the stress was essentially on weaknesses on the part of these children, although with great variability as a function of the typologies of disorders. In the successive decades, research has focused on novel methodological objectives, among which the implementation of intervention programs, which, in turn, revealed other strengths and new theoretical challenges. Yet, only few studies tested the efficiency of intervention programs aiming to enhance figurative language competencies in neurodevelopmental disorders. Furthermore, evidence regarding intervention programs promoting creative thinking (e.g., generating unique metaphorical expressions) in these disorders are remarkable scarce. The contributions of this Research Topic uncover two important facts: the most studied aspect of figurative language is metaphor and the most studied population in this respect is ASD. Thus, extending the current tools and tasks for other aspects of figurative language and to different neurodevelopmental disorders is warrant. Each contribution of this Research Topic represents an important step forward for deeper understanding of the strengths and difficulties in figurative language processing in neurodevelopmental disorders.