Abstract
Deficits in social cognition are an evident clinical feature of the Asperger syndrome (AS). Although many daily life problems of adults with AS are related to social cognition impairments, few studies have conducted comprehensive research in this area. The current study examined multiple domains of social cognition in adults with AS assessing the executive functions (EF) and exploring the intra and inter-individual variability. Fifteen adult's diagnosed with AS and 15 matched healthy controls completed a battery of social cognition tasks. This battery included measures of emotion recognition, theory of mind (ToM), empathy, moral judgment, social norms knowledge, and self-monitoring behavior in social settings. We controlled for the effect of EF and explored the individual variability. The results indicated that adults with AS had a fundamental deficit in several domains of social cognition. We also found high variability in the social cognition tasks. In these tasks, AS participants obtained mostly subnormal performance. EF did not seem to play a major role in the social cognition impairments. Our results suggest that adults with AS present a pattern of social cognition deficits characterized by the decreased ability to implicitly encode and integrate contextual information in order to access to the social meaning. Nevertheless, when social information is explicitly presented or the situation can be navigated with abstract rules, performance is improved. Our findings have implications for the diagnosis and treatment of individuals with AS as well as for the neurocognitive models of this syndrome.
Highlights
Social cognition refers to specific information processing involved in the successful navigation of challenges related to survival and reproduction in social species (Adolphs, 1999)
EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS ASSESSMENT The results showed that our groups have similar executive functions (EF) performance
Our results showed that adults with Asperger syndrome (AS) present deficits in the implicit integration of contextual information in order to access to the social meaning
Summary
Social cognition refers to specific information processing involved in the successful navigation of challenges related to survival and reproduction in social species (Adolphs, 1999). The construct of social cognition involves several domains, including emotional processing, theory of mind (ToM), decision-making, empathy, moral judgment, and social norms knowledge, among others. Multiple social cognition domains require the spontaneous perception of the relevant social elements of the situation and the interpretation of how these elements create a given social context (Klin, 2000), which depends on the implicit inference of contextual clues that bias the social meaning of an action (Ibáñez and Manes, 2012). Different strategies underlie the different social cognition domains. We investigate different aspects of social cognition in adults with Asperger syndrome (AS)
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