scholarly journals Social cognitive and interactive abilities in autism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Thaler ◽  
Laura Albantakis ◽  
Leonhard Schilbach
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
High Functioning Autism ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Computational Framework ◽  
Bayesian Brain ◽  
Level Of Functioning ◽  
Autistic People ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Social Difficulties

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by difficulties in social perception, cognition, and interaction. Differences to non-autistic peers start appearing early in development and are associated with altered brain structure and functioning. This chapter begins with an overview of research on theory of mind and empathy, discussing how social cognitive skills in these domains present in high-functioning autism. Findings indicate that, across development, a sizable portion of autistic people learns to compensate for specific difficulties. Yet, challenges in social interaction continue to impact their level of functioning in everyday life throughout adulthood. We describe how research has attempted to introduce more interactive experimental settings, and how this interactive turn has improved our understanding of autism in contexts closer related to real life. Finally, we discuss the Bayesian brain account of autism as a computational framework that explains social difficulties in terms of domain-general perceptual, cognitive and biological mechanisms. We conclude by pointing to recent developments such as participatory research and the mining of larger longitudinal datasets as ways to make autism research more effective in improving autistic people’s lives.

scholarly journals Focus on the Narrative Skills of Teenagers With Developmental Language Disorder and High Functioning Autism

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucie Broc ◽  
Elise Brassart ◽  
Anne Bragard ◽  
Thierry Olive ◽  
Marie-Anne Schelstraete
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
High Functioning Autism ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
High Functioning ◽  
Narrative Skills

Purpose: Narratives of personal experiences emerge early in language acquisition and are particularly commonly experienced in children’s daily lives. To produce these stories, children need to develop narrative, linguistic, and social-cognitive skills. Research has shown that these skills are impaired in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and high functioning autism (HFA).Aim: This study aimed to determine whether narrative skills are still impaired in adolescence and to highlight the language similarities and differences between teenagers with DLD and HFA in the production of a narrative of a personal experience.Method: Ten teenagers with DLD, 10 teenagers with HFA and 10 typically developing (TD) teenagers, matched on chronological age, told a narrative of a personal experience. These stories were analyzed to evaluate narrative skills through coherence (respect of the narrative schema) and cohesion (anaphora and connectors) and social-cognitive skills (affective and cognitive mental states of the characters, and arbitrary vocalizations such as voice noises).Results: Teenagers with DLD were less compliant with the complication step in the narrative schema than teenagers with HFA or TD. No difference was observed between the three groups of teenagers in terms of cohesion or regarding the positive and negative social-cognitive skills used in narratives.Conclusion: When producing a narrative of a personal experience, HFA teens do not have difficulties neither with narrative skills and with social-cognitive skills assessed in this paper. In DLD the profile of the teens is not the same: They do not have difficulties with social-cognitive skills and with a part of narrative skills (cohesion), and they have difficulties with the narrative schema.

Predictors of mental state understanding in preschoolers of varying socioeconomic backgrounds

2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela W. Garner ◽  
Stephanie M. Curenton ◽  
Kelli Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Life Events ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Real Life ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Cognitive Variables ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Disadvantaged Preschoolers

Two studies investigated the influence of age, language, and family background on the development of preschoolers' social cognitive skills. Study 1 examined variability in economically disadvantaged preschoolers' understanding of fantasy and evaluated the relation of age and language to children's skill in this area. Children were shown drawings of fantasy and real-life events and asked if the event could happen in real life and to justify their responses. Children were more likely to answer correctly when the drawing depicted real-life events. Age and language were positively related to children's overall understanding of fantasy. In Study 2, both low and middle SES preschoolers were included and two false belief understanding measures were added to the battery of tasks. As before, age and language were related to fantasy understanding as well as to false belief performance. In addition, SES was predictive of fantasy understanding, but not false belief performance, regardless of how it was assessed. Social competence was unrelated to the social cognitive variables, even when the effects of age, language, and SES were controlled.

Re-conceptualizing Machiavellianism and Social-Cognitive Skills

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
William Hart ◽  
Christopher J. Breeden ◽  
Charlotte Kinrade
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Person Perception ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Skill ◽  
Prediction Skill ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
College Sample ◽  
Social Prediction

Abstract. Machiavellianism is presumed to encompass advanced social-cognitive skill, but research has generally suggested that Machiavellian individuals are rather deficient in social-cognitive skill. However, previous research on the matter has been limited to measures of (a) Machiavellianism that are unidimensional and saturated with both antagonism and disinhibition and measures (b) only one type of social-cognitive skill. Using a large college sample ( N = 461), we examined how various dimensions of Machiavellianism relate to two types of social-cognitive skill: person-perception skill and general social prediction skill. Consistent with some prior theorizing, the planful dimension of Machiavellianism was positively related to both person-perception and general social prediction skills; antagonistic dimensions of Machiavellianism were negatively related to both skills; either agentic or cynical dimensions of Machiavellianism were generally unrelated to both skills. Overall, the current evidence suggests a complicated relationship between Machiavellianism and social-cognitive skill because Machiavellianism encompasses features that blend deficiency, proficiency, and average levels of social-cognitive skills.

scholarly journals Developmental trajectories of autistic social traits in the general population

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Richard Pender ◽  
Pasco Fearon ◽  
Beate St Pourcain ◽  
Jon Heron ◽  
Will Mandy
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Population Sample ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Communication Disorders ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Growth Mixture Modelling ◽  
Autistic People ◽  
Social Difficulties ◽  
Autism Trait

Abstract Background Autistic people show diverse trajectories of autistic traits over time, a phenomenon labelled ‘chronogeneity’. For example, some show a decrease in symptoms, whilst others experience an intensification of difficulties. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a dimensional condition, representing one end of a trait continuum that extends throughout the population. To date, no studies have investigated chronogeneity across the full range of autistic traits. We investigated the nature and clinical significance of autism trait chronogeneity in a large, general population sample. Methods Autistic social/communication traits (ASTs) were measured in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children using the Social and Communication Disorders Checklist (SCDC) at ages 7, 10, 13 and 16 (N = 9744). We used Growth Mixture Modelling (GMM) to identify groups defined by their AST trajectories. Measures of ASD diagnosis, sex, IQ and mental health (internalising and externalising) were used to investigate external validity of the derived trajectory groups. Results The selected GMM model identified four AST trajectory groups: (i) Persistent High (2.3% of sample), (ii) Persistent Low (83.5%), (iii) Increasing (7.3%) and (iv) Decreasing (6.9%) trajectories. The Increasing group, in which females were a slight majority (53.2%), showed dramatic increases in SCDC scores during adolescence, accompanied by escalating internalising and externalising difficulties. Two-thirds (63.6%) of the Decreasing group were male. Conclusions Clinicians should note that for some young people autism-trait-like social difficulties first emerge during adolescence accompanied by problems with mood, anxiety, conduct and attention. A converse, majority-male group shows decreasing social difficulties during adolescence.

Training Development for Complex Cognitive Tasks

1987 ◽  
Vol 31 (11) ◽  
pp. 1261-1265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan M. Ryder ◽  
Richard E. Redding ◽  
Peter F. Beckschi
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Task Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Cognitive Task Analysis ◽  
Instructional Systems ◽  
Training Development ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Training Methodologies ◽  
Complex Cognitive Skills

This study evaluated current training methodologies, particularly Instructional Systems Development (ISD), and recent developments in cognitive science to determine how training procedures should be modified to support training for tasks which require complex cognitive skills. We contend that ISD is still viable if procedures are developed for the training of cognitive skills. An important component of ISD which needs to be modified to support training of cognitive skills is the task analysis. We discuss the need for integrating efficient and cost-effective cognitive task analysis methodologies with traditional analysis methods.

scholarly journals Predictive context biases binocular rivalry in children and adults with no positive relation to two measures of social cognition

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Valuch ◽  
Louisa Kulke
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Binocular Rivalry ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Similar Degree ◽  
Eye Dominance ◽  
Adult Participants

Integration of prior experience and contextual information can help to resolve perceptually ambiguous situations and might support the ability to understand other peoples’ thoughts and intentions, called Theory of Mind. We studied whether the readiness to incorporate contextual information for resolving binocular rivalry is positively associated with Theory-of-Mind-related social cognitive abilities. In children (12 to 13 years) and adults (18 to 25 years), a predictive temporal context reliably modulated the onset of binocular rivalry to a similar degree. In contrast, adult participants scored better on measures of Theory of Mind compared to children. We observed considerable interindividual differences regarding the influence of a predictive context on binocular rivalry, which were associated with differences in sensory eye dominance. The absence of a positive association between predictive effects on perception and Theory of Mind performance suggests that predictive effects on binocular rivalry and higher-level Theory-of-Mind-related abilities stem from different neurocognitive mechanisms. We conclude that the influence of predictive contextual information on basic visual processes is fully developed at an earlier age, whereas social cognitive skills continue to evolve from adolescence to adulthood.

scholarly journals Modeling the mind: Assessment of if…then… profiles as a window to shared and idiosyncratic psychological processes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Zayas ◽  
Randy T. Lee ◽  
Yuichi Shoda
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Affective Processing ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Personality System

People’s behavior is characterized by stable if…then… profiles, or if in x situation then behavior a, but if in y situation then behavior b. But how do researchers conceptualize and measure if…then… profiles? Drawing from Cognitive-Affective Processing System (CAPS) theory, we discuss recent developments in assessing if…then… profiles, and how such profiles can provide a window for elucidating key aspects of the underlying personality system. Specifically, the Highly-Repeated Within-Person (HRWP) approach assesses how a behavior varies as a function of key features in a situation, and operationalizes if…then… profiles as regression betas. We illustrate how the HRWP approach can be applied to data from often-used social cognitive tasks, wherein an individual is exposed to a large number of situations that differ on a dimension that has been experimentally-manipulated by the researcher, and their behaviors to the situations are tracked. The HRWP approach allows researchers to more precisely assess a given individual’s if…then… pattern, make stronger causal inferences about a given individual’s personality system, and empirically investigate, rather than simply assume, if there are meaningful differences between individuals in the causal processes.

scholarly journals Emotional processing of ironic vs. literal criticism in autistic and non-autistic adults: Evidence from eye-tracking

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahsa Barzy ◽  
Ruth Filik ◽  
David Williams ◽  
Heather Jane Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Target Sentence ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Autistic People ◽  
Autistic Adults ◽  
Specific Difficulty

Typically developing (TD) adults are able to keep track of story characters’ emotional states online while reading. Filik et al. (2017) showed that initially, participants expected the victim to be more hurt by ironic comments than literal, but later considered them less hurtful; ironic comments were regarded as more amusing. We examined these processes in autistic adults, since previous research has demonstrated socio-emotional difficulties among autistic people, which may lead to problems processing irony and its related emotional processes despite an intact ability to integrate language in context. We recorded eye movements from autistic and non-autistic adults while they read narratives in which a character (the victim) was either criticised in an ironic or a literal manner by another character (the protagonist). A target sentence then either described the victim as feeling hurt/amused by the comment, or the protagonist as having intended to hurt/amused the victim by making the comment. Results from the non-autistic adults broadly replicated the key findings from Filik et al. (2017), supporting the two-stage account. Importantly, the autistic adults did not show comparable two-stage processing of ironic language; they did not differentiate between the emotional responses for victims or protagonists following ironic vs. literal criticism. These findings suggest that autistic people experience a specific difficulty taking into account other peoples’ communicative intentions (i.e. infer their mental state) to appropriately anticipate emotional responses to an ironic comment. We discuss how these difficulties might link to atypical socio-emotional processing in autism, and the ability to maintain successful real-life social interactions.

scholarly journals Social Cognition through the Lens of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Arioli ◽  
Chiara Crespi ◽  
Nicola Canessa
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Deficits ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Acquired Brain Injury ◽  
Clinical Neuroscience ◽  
Pathological Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Cognitive Deficits

Social cognition refers to a set of processes, ranging from perception to decision-making, underlying the ability to decode others’ intentions and behaviors to plan actions fitting with social and moral, besides individual and economic considerations. Its centrality in everyday life reflects the neural complexity of social processing and the ubiquity of social cognitive deficits in different pathological conditions. Social cognitive processes can be clustered in three domains associated with (a) perceptual processing of social information such as faces and emotional expressions (social perception), (b) grasping others’ cognitive or affective states (social understanding), and (c) planning behaviors taking into consideration others’, in addition to one’s own, goals (social decision-making). We review these domains from the lens of cognitive neuroscience, i.e., in terms of the brain areas mediating the role of such processes in the ability to make sense of others’ behavior and plan socially appropriate actions. The increasing evidence on the “social brain” obtained from healthy young individuals nowadays constitutes the baseline for detecting changes in social cognitive skills associated with physiological aging or pathological conditions. In the latter case, impairments in one or more of the abovementioned domains represent a prominent concern, or even a core facet, of neurological (e.g., acquired brain injury or neurodegenerative diseases), psychiatric (e.g., schizophrenia), and developmental (e.g., autism) disorders. To pave the way for the other papers of this issue, addressing the social cognitive deficits associated with severe acquired brain injury, we will briefly discuss the available evidence on the status of social cognition in normal aging and its breakdown in neurodegenerative disorders. Although the assessment and treatment of such impairments is a relatively novel sector in neurorehabilitation, the evidence summarized here strongly suggests that the development of remediation procedures for social cognitive skills will represent a future field of translational research in clinical neuroscience.

Facial Emotion Processing and Language During Middle Childhood: An Event Related Potential Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Bigelow ◽  
Gillian M Clark ◽  
Jarrad Lum ◽  
Peter Gregory Enticott
Keyword(s):  
Middle Childhood ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Facial Emotion ◽  
Physiological Indicators ◽  
Facial Emotion Processing ◽  
Related Potentials

Facial emotion processing (FEP) is critical to social cognitive ability. Developmentally, FEP rapidly improves in early childhood and continues to be fine-tuned throughout middle childhood and into adolescence. Previous research has suggested that language plays a role in the development of social cognitive skills, including non-verbal emotion recognition tasks. Here we investigated whether language is associated with specific neurophysiological indicators of FEP. One hundred and fourteen children (4-12 years) completed a language assessment and a FEP task including stimuli depicting anger, happiness, fear, and neutrality. EEG was used to record key event related potentials (ERPs; P100, N170, LPP at occipital and parietal sites separately) previously shown to be sensitive to faces and facial emotion. While there were no main effects of language, the P100 latency to negative expressions appeared to increase with language, while LPP amplitude increased with language for negative and neutral expressions. These findings suggest that language is linked to some early physiological indicators of FEP, but this is dependent on the facial expression. Future studies should explore the role of language in later stages of neural processing, with a focus on processes localised to ventromedial prefrontal regions.

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