27843
Exploring Theory-of-Mind in Children, Adolescents and Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions in a Large European Cohort
‘Theory of Mind’ (ToM) hypothesis is a prominent account of social-communicative impairments in ASC; the ability to ascribe mental states to others/self to predict behaviours (Baron-Cohen, et al., 2000). Studies report many adolescents/adults with ASC pass ‘first-order’ tasks, yet struggle in social situations (Klin, 2000). This has led to the distinction between ‘first order’ ToM abilities (e.g. ‘false belief’ measured in a continuous manner by the “Sandbox” task (Begeer et al., 2012)), and perhaps more pervasive impairments in spontaneous usage (Klin, 2000; Volkmar et al., 2004). One paradigm that taps spontaneous attribution of mental status is the ‘animated shapes’ task that elicits a (verbal)ToM response more akin to the “social demands” inherent in real-life.
Objectives:
To investigate false belief and spontaneous ToM usage in a mixed sex cohort of males and females with ASD across different ages and IQ. Associations between ToM and social-communicative abilities will also be examined
Methods:
Participants with ASCs (N=363) and age-matched typically developing (TD) participants (N=262) recruited as part of EU-AIMS Longitudinal European Autism Project (LEAP). A battery of cognitive tasks included the Frith-Happe Triangles animations ‘Animated Shapes’ task (Abell et al 2000; Castelli et al., 2002) and the continuous false belief ‘Sandbox’ task to assess theory of mind. The ‘Triangles’ task were audio-recorded/transcribed/analysed for “accuracy” (I.e. correct inference of underlying scenarios) and “psychological state descriptions” (i.e. use of mental state terms) using a scoring system developed by the authors, based on Castelli (2000). 100% of the narratives were scored by two raters at each LEAP site, inter-rater reliability was above 91% across.
IQ assessed using the WASI, autism symptomatology using the (parent-report) Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2), adaptive functioning using the Vineland (VABS-III).
2 (group) x 2(sex) x 3 (age group: child, adolescent, adult) between-subject ANOVAs were used.
Results:
Both tasks revealed moderate correlations in both groups (ASC: r =.25, p = .01;TD: r =.14, p = .05).
The “Sandbox” task found a significant effect of group (F(1,516)=8.403, p<.05, d= 0.24) with the ASC group performing significantly worse (i.e. greater egocentric bias) than TDs.
No group differences found on the ‘Triangles’ task. Significant effect of sex(F(1,609)=6.938, p<.05, d=0.28)(females<males) and age(F(3,609)=33.349, p<.001)(children<adolescents<adults) found, effects do not hold with diagnosis.
The ‘triangles’ task was moderately correlated with ASD symptomatology in both groups (TD; r =-.31, p < .01, ASC; r =-.21, p < .01). ‘Sandbox’ task correlated with ASC symptomatology in the ASC group only(r =-.16, p < .01).
In the ASC group, the ‘triangles’ task was correlated with adaptive behaviour (r =-.14, p = .05) in males, and adolescents (social domain, r =-.23, p = .05). TD group; the ‘triangles’ task correlated with Communication(r =-.20, p = .05).
The continuous FB task correlated with adaptive behaviour in the ASC group, (daily living(r =.22, p = .01.;communication(r=.15, p=.05 );social(r=.30, p=.01)) in males. In the TD males, it correlated with all domains of adaptive behaviour.
Conclusions: We report group differences in prompted ToM usage, though find no group deficits in spontaneous ToM usage in individuals with ASC.