Abstract
Self-other distinction is a crucial aspect of social cognition, as it allows us to differentiate our own mental and emotional states from those of others. Research suggests that this ability might be impaired in individuals on the autism spectrum, but convincing evidence of self-other distinction difficulties in the emotional domain is lacking. Here we aimed at evaluating emotional self-other distinction abilities in autistic and non-autistic adults, in two behavioral pilot studies and one fMRI study. By using a newly developed virtual ball-tossing game that induced simultaneous positive and negative emotional states in each participant and another person, we were able to measure emotional egocentric and altercentric biases (namely the tendency to ascribe self-/other-related emotions to others/ourselves, respectively). Despite no behavioral differences, individuals on the autism spectrum showed decreased activation (1) in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) during active overcoming of the emotional egocentric bias vs. passive game viewing, and (2) in the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) during ego- vs. altercentric biases, compared to neurotypical participants. These results suggest a different recruitment of these two regions in autistic individuals when dealing with conflicting emotional states of oneself and another person. Furthermore, they highlight the importance of considering different control conditions when interpreting the involvement of rTPJ and rSMG during self-other distinction processes.
Highlights
Social cognition, the capacity to sense, represent and judge our own social behaviors and those of others, is an ubiquitous aspect of the human mind and crucial for everyday social interactions [see [1] for a review]
While we focus on the results of the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study in the present manuscript, the analysis of the two behavioral pilot studies can be found in the Supplementary Material
The results of the behavioral pilot study data can be found in the Supplementary Material. These analyses revealed conclusive evidence that our version of the Cyberball task was able to manipulate the congruency of simultaneous emotional states, as we observed an egocentric biases (EEB) and emotional altercentric biases (EAB) in the participants’ ratings in behavioral pilot study 1, indexed by significant main effects of congruence and target × congruence interactions
Summary
The capacity to sense, represent and judge our own social behaviors and those of others, is an ubiquitous aspect of the human mind and crucial for everyday social interactions [see [1] for a review]. For example, are less likely to draw a sharp distinction between their own and another’s perspective [(10) for a review], and are more likely to confuse self- and other-related emotions [(11) for a review; [12] for a meta-analysis; [13]], leading to distorted cognitive and affective representations named biases. Bird and Viding [10] speculate that the so-called “self-other switch” could be impaired in autistic individuals, who might, in turn, be more or less affected by others’ emotional states. This is in line with studies relating the ability to accurately represent self and others’ mental and emotional states to personal distress in individuals on the spectrum [13]
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