Explaining the theory of mind deficit in autism spectrum disorder

Adams, Marcus

doi:10.1007/s11098-011-9809-z

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…They, however, cannot explain the specific issues autistic people face with social interactions [10]. Instead, the latter are typically viewed as resulting from an underlying impairment in Theory of Mind or ToM [11,12], i.e. the ability to understand others' covert mental states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social behavioural adaptation in Autism

2020

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Autism is still diagnosed on the basis of subjective assessments of elusive notions such as interpersonal contact and social reciprocity. We propose to decompose reciprocal social interactions in their basic computational constituents. Specifically, we test the assumption that autistic individuals disregard information regarding the stakes of social interactions when adapting to others. We compared 24 adult autistic participants to 24 neurotypical (NT) participants engaging in a repeated dyadic competitive game against artificial agents with calibrated reciprocal adaptation capabilities. Critically, participants were framed to believe either that they were competing against somebody else or that they were playing a gambling game. Only the NT participants did alter their adaptation strategy when they held information regarding others' competitive incentives, in which case they outperformed the AS group. Computational analyses of trial-by-trial choice sequences show that the behavioural repertoire of autistic people exhibits subnormal flexibility and mentalizing sophistication, especially when information regarding opponents' incentives was available. These two computational phenotypes yield 79% diagnosis classification accuracy and explain 62% of the severity of social symptoms in autistic participants. Such computational decomposition of the autistic social phenotype may prove relevant for drawing novel diagnostic boundaries and guiding individualized clinical interventions in autism.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social behavioural adaptation in Autism

2020

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“…Several authors (Gerrans & Stone, 2008;Stone & Gerrans, 2006;Wilkinson & Ball, 2012) argue that such reasoning relies on the interaction between a lower-level domain-specific mechanism and domain-general mechanisms, whereas others (Adams, 2011;BaronCohen, 1995) posit a single, domain-specific module that is also responsible for the higher-level reasoning processes involved. As we saw, cognitive load did not affect performance for the ToP tasks, yet ToP tasks demand domain-general cognitive resources, as shown by the lower accuracy and longer latencies on the secondary task, especially when performed concurrently with ToP2.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Under this approach, inferring the emotions involved in a social situation (e.g., knowing that a boy who was tripped by his classmate will feel angry) is a more difficult process than merely identifying facial expressions (Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, & Peretz, 2005) because it requires a reasoning process, thought by some to be handled by domain-general mechanisms. Others (e.g., Adams, 2011;BaronCohen, 1995) posit a domain-specific module that is responsible for the full reasoning process involved, including its more complex aspects. Determining how concurrent tasks affect and are in turn affected by the processing of ToP tasks may shed some light on this issue.…”

Section: The Theory Of Psychology (Top)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The need for central resources in answering questions in different domains: Folk psychology, biology, and economics

Ziv

Leiser

2013

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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“…One of the most influential theories about ASD social deficits asserts that these are eventually due to an underlying impairment in Theory of Mind or ToM [9,10], i.e. the ability to understand others’ covert mental states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A reverse Turing-test for predicting social deficits in people with Autism

Devaine

Daunizeau

2018

Preprint

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Abstract:Social symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are typically viewed as consequences of an impaired Theory of Mind, i.e. the ability to understand others’ covert mental states. Here, we test the assumption that such “mind blindness” may be due to the inability to exploit contextual knowledge about, e.g., the stakes of social interactions, to make sense of otherwise ambiguous cues (e.g., idiosyncratic responses to social competition). In this view, social cognition in ASD may simply reduce to non-social cognition, i.e. cognition that is not informed by the social context. We compared 24 adult participants with ASD to 24 neurotypic participants in a repeated dyadic competitive game against artificial agents with calibrated mentalizing sophistication. Critically, participants were framed to believe that they were competing against humans (social framing) or not (non-social framing), hence the “reverse Turing test”. In contrast to control participants, the strategy of people with ASD is insensitive to the game’s framing, i.e. they do not constrain their understanding of others’ behaviour with the contextual knowledge about the game (cf. competitive social framing). They also outperform controls when playing against simple agents, but are outperformed by them against recursive algorithms framed as human opponents. Moreover, computational analyses of trial-by-trial choice sequences in the game show that individuals with ASD rely on a distinctive cognitive strategy with subnormal flexibility and mentalizing sophistication. These computational phenotypes yield 79% diagnosis classification accuracy and explain 62% of the severity of social symptoms in people with ASD.

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Explaining the theory of mind deficit in autism spectrum disorder

Cited by 10 publications

References 55 publications

Social behavioural adaptation in Autism

Social behavioural adaptation in Autism

The need for central resources in answering questions in different domains: Folk psychology, biology, and economics

A reverse Turing-test for predicting social deficits in people with Autism

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