Preserved spontaneous mentalizing amid reduced intersubject variability in autism during a movie narrative

Abstract

Individuals with autism may perform well in structured Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks that assess their ability to infer mental states, yet encounter challenges in everyday social interactions. Using fMRI and pupillometry, we investigated whether this discrepancy stems from reduced spontaneous mentalizing or broader difficulties in unstructured environments. Autistic adults and neurotypical controls viewed a nonverbal animated movie featuring events known to evoke mental state inferences. Both groups exhibited similar ToM network activations and pupil responses to these events, alongside comparable verbal accounts of the mental states portrayed. However, intersubject correlation analysis revealed a significant reduction in response variability among autistic participants throughout the movie’s complex visual narrative, affecting brain regions beyond the ToM network. We suggest that the primary challenge for individuals with autism may lie in the idiosyncratic exploration of narratives in unstructured settings, regardless of whether mental state inferences are involved.