Abstract
Although social cognition is frequently identified as a target in clinical trials and psychosocial interventions for adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), these efforts are hampered by a lack of consensus and validation of social cognitive measures. The current study provides psychometric evaluation of 11 frequently used measures encompassing different subdomains of social cognition. Adults with autism (N = 103) and typically developing controls (N = 95) completed 11 commonly used social cognitive tasks spanning the domains of emotion processing, social perception, and mentalizing/theory of mind. We examined each measure's internal reliability and sensitivity to group differences, how performance related to general intellectual ability, and alignment of measures with a proposed two‐factor structure of social cognition in ASD. Controls outperformed the ASD group on 8 of the 11 social cognitive tasks, with the largest group differences occurring on two mentalizing measures, The awareness of social inference task (TASIT) and hinting task. In ASD, all tasks demonstrated strong internal consistency and avoided ceiling and floor effects. Social cognitive performance was also related to, but not redundant with, intellectual functioning. We also found support for a two‐factor structure of social cognition, with basic social perception and emotional processing aligning into a lower‐order social perception factor, while mentalizing tasks aligned into a higher‐order social appraisal factor. In sum, eight tasks showed adequate to strong psychometric properties. The psychometric data, effect size estimates, and correlations between measures reported here can be used for study planning for social cognitive interventions in autism. Autism Research 2019, 12: 766–778. © 2019 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Lay SummaryWe examined 11 tasks that measure how adults with autism perceive and interpret social information. Eight of the tasks were reliable and showed lower performance in adults with autism compared to typically‐developing controls. Task performance was related to but distinguishable from IQ. These measures evaluated here may be useful in assessing the effectiveness of interventions and treatments to improve social abilities in adults with autism.
Highlights
Social cognition refers to the ability to perceive and interpret social information [Brothers, 1990] and is broadly impaired in disorders characterized by social impairments such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including in those without intellectual disability [Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, & Robertson, 1997; Heavey, Phillips, Baron-Cohen, & Rutter, 2000; Klin, 2000; Klin, Jones, Schultz, Volkmar, & Cohen, 2002; Sasson, Pinkham, Carpenter, & Belger, 2011; Klin et al, 2002]
For TD adults, internal consistency was only strong for the The awareness of social inference task (TASIT), CToM, trust, and biological motion tasks, with the other tasks (i.e., Benton, Relationships across domains (RAD), mind in the eyes, trustworthiness, Bell Lysaker emotion recognition task (BLERT), ER40, Emotional Biological Motion) showing lower levels of internal reliability, especially for the hinting task (α = 0.40)
The current study sought to address these challenges by comprehensively evaluating the psychometric properties of 11 social cognitive tasks spanning three domains within a sample of 103 adults with ASD and 95 TD controls
Summary
Social cognition refers to the ability to perceive and interpret social information [Brothers, 1990] and is broadly impaired in disorders characterized by social impairments such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including in those without intellectual disability [Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, & Robertson, 1997; Heavey, Phillips, Baron-Cohen, & Rutter, 2000; Klin, 2000; Klin, Jones, Schultz, Volkmar, & Cohen, 2002; Sasson, Pinkham, Carpenter, & Belger, 2011; Klin et al, 2002]. Other nominated tasks, such as the measure of attributional style [ambiguous intentions and hostility questionnaire; Combs, Penn, Wicher, & Waldheter, 2007] and the trustworthiness task [Adolphs, Tranel, & Damasio, 1998] performed poorly and were not recommended for further use. Show distinctions in aspects of social cognition, such as greater impairments in social perception in ASD [e.g., face processing; Pilowsky, Yirmiya, Arbelle, & Mozes, 2000; Sasson et al, 2007; Sasson, Pinkham, Weittenhiller, Faso, & Simpson, 2016] but fewer impairments in higher-order social appraisal [e.g., theory of mind and attributional biases Pinkham et al, 2012; Sasson et al, 2011] These differences suggest that social cognitive performance and domains may be related in different ways for ASD and schizophrenia. We predicted that social perception and social appraisal tasks would be more strongly related to each other compared to each domain’s relationship with IQ
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