Enter the Wild: Autistic Traits and Their Relationship to Mentalizing and Social Interaction in Everyday Life

Abstract

Theories derived from lab-based research emphasize the importance of mentalizing for social interaction and propose a link between mentalizing, autistic traits, and social behavior. We took social cognitive research outside the lab to test these assumptions in everyday life. Via smartphone-based experience sampling and logging of smartphone usage behavior we quantified mentalizing and social interaction in our participants' natural environment. Both measures were compared with autistic traits, controlling for Big Five personality dimensions, social anxiety, and verbal intelligence. Mentalizing occurred less frequently than reasoning about actions and participants preferred to mentalize when alone. Autistic traits were negatively correlated with communication via smartphone. Yet, they were not associated with social media usage, a more indirect way of getting in touch with others. We further found no relation between autistic traits and social network size. These findings critically inform recent theories on social cognition and behavior in individuals with and without autism.

Behavioral Patterns in Smartphone Usage Predict Big Five Personality Traits

“…The dataset used in this study was composed of three distinct datasets, collected in three separate studies within the context of the PhoneStudy research project at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) (Stachl et al, 2018). Although, small parts of the data have been used in other publications (Schoedel et al, 2018;Schuwerk, Kaltefleiter, Au, Hösl, & Stachl, 2018;Stachl et al, 2017), the joint dataset of common parameters has not been analyzed before. Procedures for all three studies have been approved by institutional review boards and have been conducted according to EU-laws and ethical standards.…”

“…Study procedures were somewhat different with regard to the respective study (Schoedel et al, 2018;Schuwerk et al, 2018;Stachl et al, 2017). However, common to all three studies, big five personality trait levels were collected with the BFSI at least once and naturalistic smartphone usage in the field was automatically recorded over a period of 30 days.…”

“…In study 1, participants did not have to complete any tasks during data collection in the field. In study 2, participants had to answer experience sampling questionnaires during the data collection period on their smartphones (Schuwerk et al, 2018). Participants in study 3 also had to complete the demographic and BFSI personality questionnaires via smartphone at a convenient time (Schoedel et al, 2018).…”

“…In study 1, an individualized personality profile and 30e or course credit (3h) for students were offered. In study 2, participants were rewarded 25e to 35e, dependent on their participation in the experience sampling scheme of the study (see, Schuwerk et al, 2018). Additionally, the participants could enter a lottery to win a smartphone (value 400e).…”

“…research question at hand. Although additional measures will not be further described here, more information can be found in the respective online-repositories and articles (Harari et al, 2019;Schoedel et al, 2018;Schuwerk et al, 2018;Stachl et al, 2017).…”