Abstract
IntroductionIt is well established that autistic spectrum disorder is linked to difficulties with mentalising, but the ways in which this affects everyday behaviour is less well understood. This study explored the nature and extent of difficulties in everyday social functioning in adults with Asperger's syndrome (AS), since increased understanding can enhance the development of more effective intervention strategies.MethodsIndividuals with AS (n=21) were compared with healthy control participants (n=21) on three tests of social cognition: the Mentalistic Interpretation task, which assesses interpretation of sarcasm and actions; the Social Problem Fluency task, which assesses ability to generate problem solutions; and the Social Problem Resolution task, which assesses judgement in selecting problem solutions.ResultsComprehension of both sarcastic remarks and actions was impaired in those with AS on the mentalistic interpretation task. Participants with AS showed difficulties in identifying the awkward elements of everyday social scenarios, and they were also impaired in generating problem solutions but not in judging alternative solutions on the social problem fluency and resolution tasks.ConclusionsThese tasks potentially provide a means of profiling strengths and weaknesses in social processing, which in turn has implications for informing clinical evaluation and training.
Highlights
It is well established that autistic spectrum disorder is linked to difficulties with mentalising, but the ways in which this affects everyday behaviour is less well understood
The present study investigated whether these difficulties were present in adults with Asperger’s syndrome (AS), using a more comprehensive set of social cognition tasks developed by Channon and Crawford (2010); these materials have already been shown to be sensitive to impairments in everyday mentalising and social problem solving in participants with acquired brain injury
This study was designed to examine understanding and interpretation of social behaviour, and the extent of any difficulties in social judgement shown by adults with AS on a set of social cognition tasks based on awkward everyday scenarios
Summary
It is well established that autistic spectrum disorder is linked to difficulties with mentalising, but the ways in which this affects everyday behaviour is less well understood. Participants with AS showed difficulties in identifying the awkward elements of everyday social scenarios, and they were impaired in generating problem solutions but not in judging alternative solutions on the social problem fluency and resolution tasks. Difficulties in mentalising are thought to form the key impairment in individuals with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD; e.g., Frith, 2001). How these difficulties affect everyday behaviour is, less well understood. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted
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