Belief‐attribution in adults with and without autistic spectrum disorders

Abstract

An important aspect of daily life is the ability to infer information about the contents of other people's minds, such as what they can see and what they know, in order to engage in successful interactions. This is referred to as possession of a “Theory of Mind” (ToM). Past research has shown that adults with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often show deficits in social communication abilities, although can successfully pass tests of explicit ToM. The current study utilized a computerized false‐belief task to explore subtle differences (i.e., measuring response times and accuracy rates) in how efficiently ToM capacities—specifically, belief‐attribution—are utilized in adults with and without ASD. In the task, participants were asked to attribute a belief‐state to either themselves or another person, following establishment of a true or false‐belief scenario. Results revealed comparable patterns of ToM engagement across individuals with and without ASD, with faster and more accurate responses to “Self” versus “Other” oriented questions, and slower response times when shifting between the “Self” and “Other” perspective compared to when maintaining a perspective. However, autistic individuals showed a particular deficit in correctly identifying a belief‐state in false‐belief trials, in which two contrasting belief‐states had to be held in mind, suggesting more difficulty disengaging from current, reality based belief‐states than neuro‐typical individuals. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1542–1553. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Lay Summary To successfully communicate, we have to think about what other people do/do not know; this is called having a “Theory of Mind.” This study looked at how well people use their Theory of Mind when thinking about the contents of people's minds. Results showed that people with autism had difficulties considering more than one mental state at a time, suggesting they may have more trouble in stopping themselves thinking about what is happening in reality than people without autism.

Affective states influence emotion perception: evidence for emotional egocentricity

“…Finally, we did not find evidence for an association between emotional egocentricity and autistic traits. Even though stronger egocentric biases have been reported in ASC (Bradford et al, 2018;Pearson et al, 2013), as well as in individuals from the general population with high autistic traits (Brunyé et al, 2012), these were mainly detected in cognitive mentalizing tasks. The only study known to us that specifically investigated emotional egocentricity did not find differences in the magnitude of egocentric biases between individuals with ASC and controls (Hoffmann et al, 2016).…”

“…An association between mood-congruent biases and dispositional empathy would be an indication that the mood effects on emotion perception are related to processes of social cognition. Finally, we explored associations with autistic traits, as stronger egocentricity during cognitive mentalizing (Bradford, Hukker, Smith, & Ferguson, 2018;Pearson, Ropar, & de Hamilton, 2013) and deficits in emotion recognition (Uljarevic and Hamilton, 2013) are commonly observed in autism spectrum conditions (ASC).…”

Preserved Perspective Taking in Free Indirect Discourse in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…However, it is also possible that our purely behavioral measures in this web-based study were not sensitive enough to identify group differences. Previous studies have shown difficulties associated with second-order ToM tasks despite correct task responses, e.g., regarding the causal reasoning about others’ mental states ( Ozonoff et al, 1991 ; Bowler, 1992 ; Happé, 1994 ; Dziobek et al, 2006 ), eye movements ( Senju et al, 2009 ; Scheeren et al, 2013 ; Schneider et al, 2013 ; Schuwerk et al, 2015 ; Murray et al, 2017 ) as well as regarding the attribution of belief which has been shown to not happen automatically ( Senju et al, 2009 ) and to be more difficult for adults with ASD than for control participants ( Bradford et al, 2018 ). Future studies on FID in ASD should therefore also include either a non-text-based ToM task to assess if persons with ASD show second-order ToM impairments in other domains or a FID component that requires faster responses, possibly as a task in an ongoing interaction with another person.…”

“…However, because we did not investigate executive functions, these claims are speculative. Potentially, implicit methods could in principle reveal processing differences in ASD while behavior is otherwise unimpaired (e.g., Bradford et al (2018) ).…”

从动作模仿到社会认知：自我-他人控制的作用

“…(inferior parietal lobule)和额下回(inferior frontal gyrus) (Caspers, Zilles, Laird, & Eickhoff, 2010;Molenberghs, Cunnington, & Mattingley, 2009) & Heyes, 2005;Brass et al, 2009;Spengler et al, 2009) (Brass et al, 2001;Brass et al, 2003;Deschrijver, Wiersema, & Brass, 2017a;Genschow et al, 2017 Spengler et al, 2009) (Mulert et al, 2004;Perrin et al, 2005) Spengler et al, 2009)。来自孤独症的 研究发现, 孤独症个体不但在心理理论和共情等 社会认知能力上存在一定缺陷 (Bradford, Hukker, Smith, & Ferguson, 2018;Happé, 1994;Smith, 2009;Schulte-Rüther et al, 2017;White, Hill, Happé, & Frith, 2009), 在控制对他人动作的自动模仿上也 存在困难 (Bird, Leighton, Press, & Heyes, 2007;Leighton, Bird, Charman, & Heyes, 2008;Sowden, Koehne, Catmur, Dziobek, & Bird, 2016;Spengler, Bird, & Brass, 2010) Brass et al, 2009;Spengler et al, 2009)。因为 TPJ 负责对自我和他人相关表征进行身份识别 (Decety & Lamm, 2007;Steinbeis, 2016), 而 aFMC 负责调 控自我和他人相关表征之间的冲突 (Brass et al, 2009;Spengler et al, 2009) Brass et al, 2009;Spengler et al, 2009)。有研究者认为, 在 SOC 中, 这个两个脑区 的功能是不同的, TPJ 主要负责对自我和他人相关 表征进行区分, 即对自我和他人相关表征进行身 份识别 (Decety & Lamm, 2007;Steinbeis, 2016),…”