Difficulties in spontaneously performing level 2 perspective-taking skills in children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate why children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to respond to tasks from their own perspective. The authors investigated the effects of explicitness of viewpoint on performance of spontaneous level 2 perspective-taking skills in six- to eight-year-old children with ASD. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted visual perspective-taking tasks with explicit and implicit instructions about the viewpoint to be used. Participants operated a toy car on a map while listening to the experimenter’s instructions. In the implicit condition, when the experimenter said “Turn right/left” at each intersection, the participants moved the car accordingly. Subsequently, in the explicit condition, the experimenter said “Look from the driver’s viewpoint and turn right/left” at each intersection. Findings In the implicit condition, the authors did not observe a clear developmental change in performance between six- and eight-year-old children in the ASD group. In contrast, performance in the ASD group improved under the explicit condition relative to that under the implicit condition. Originality/value The results suggest six- to eight-year-old children with ASD tend not to spontaneously use level 2 perspective-taking skills. Therefore, viewpoints should be explicitly instructed to children with ASD. In addition, it is also important to implement training to encourage spontaneous transitions from self-perspective to other-perspective under the implicit condition.

Training Conditions for Establishing Visual Level 2 Perspective-Taking in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…This method requires that the distance between the participant's head and the eye tracker be kept somewhat constant. In VPT2, the sensation and minute movement of the body is in an unstable position (Watanabe, 2016), and physically turning or moving the body to another viewpoint (Asaoka et al, 2019;Kessler & Thomson, 2010) affects performance. Thus, VPT2 is very sensitive to body sensation and position.…”

“…In the ASD group, children with ASD who met the following criteria were newly recruited: 1) the CA is 8 years old. The reason for this was that the children after the age of 8 years are able to perform VPT2 skills spontaneously (Asaoka et al, 2019) and their fluency increased (Elekes, Varga, & Király, 2017), suggesting that the introduction of conditions was expected to be effective; 2) intellectual development is more advanced. All children were assessed for intellectual development with the Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PVT-R) (Ueno, Nadeo, & Iinaga, 2008), which is the official standardized scale in Japan.…”

“…It has been clarified suggested that the factor is that perspective transformation, which refers to imaging that where you are in a different location or have a different orientation (Yu & Zacks, 2010), does not fully activate (Conson et al, 2016;Conson et al, 2013) in children with ASD. For example, Asaoka et al (2019) conducted a task in which children with ASD listened to navigational information and operated a miniature car on a map. The children were instructed to "Turn left, or right," or "Look from the driver's viewpoint and turn left, or right" at an intersection.…”

The presence of other‐race people disrupts spontaneous level‐2 visual perspective taking

“…Many studies involving patients with social function impairments also support this dual‐process view of VPT. Patients with schizophrenia or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show more severe damage in spontaneous VPT than intentional VPT (Asaoka, Takahashi, Chen, Fujiwara, Watanabe, & Noro, 2019; Eack, Wojtalik, Newhill, Keshavan & Phillips, 2013; Hamilton, Brindley & Frith, 2009; Kronbichler, Stelzig‐Scholer, Pearce et al ., 2019). For instance, Doi, Kanai, Tsumura, Shinohara & Kato (2020) found that male adults with ASD showed a deficiency in spontaneously taking others’ perspectives in the dot perspective task, which was manifested by a reduction in allocentric interference.…”

“…Level-2 VPT contributes more to effective social interaction than level-1 VPT. Several studies have suggested that a deficiency in level-2 VPT is common in children with ASD, while level-1 VPT is intact (Asaoka et al, 2019;Hamilton et al, 2009). Asaoka et al (2019) found that 6-to 8-year-old children with ASD only showed a weak tendency to spontaneously use level-2 perspective-taking skills.…”