Abstract
Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and schizophrenia spectrum conditions (SSC) are both characterized by changes in social-cognitive functioning. Less is known about the overlap and the differences in social-cognitive functioning when comparing individuals with subclinical levels of ASC and SSC, while studies in non-clinical samples have the benefit of avoiding confounds that are present in clinical groups. Therefore, we first examined how autistic-like experiences, positive psychotic-like experiences and the co-occurrence of both correlated with the performance on an extensive battery of social cognition tasks in young adolescents. Second, we examined the effect of autistic-like experiences, psychotic-like experiences and their co-occurrence on friendships in daily life. A total of 305 adolescents (Mage = 12.6, sd = 0.4, 147 boys) participated in the current study. A battery of social cognition tasks, comprising the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task, Dot perspective task and trust game were individually administered in a classroom setting, along with a friendship peer nomination questionnaire. Results indicated no evidence for a relationship between the performance on the social cognition battery and subclinical experiences of autism and/or psychosis. However, results did show that the amount of autistic-like experiences of adolescents were associated with being less often selected as a friend by their peers. By contrast, no relationship between self-reported friendships and autistic-like experiences was found. Neither a relationship between friendships and psychotic-like experiences was reported. This study provides initial evidence that information provided by peers may shed light on (altered) social behavior associated with autistic-like experiences that is not apparent on performance measures, as well as elucidate possible differences between autistic- and psychotic-like experiences.
Highlights
Both autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and schizophrenia spectrum conditions (SSC) are neurocognitive conditions characterized by altered social-cognitive functioning
Results showed that having either autisticlike experiences or psychotic-like experiences was associated with increased perspective-taking errors, but this effect was reduced in the group with a combination of both high autistic tendencies and high psychosis proneness. The performance of the latter group was similar to that of those with low autistic tendencies and low psychosis proneness [27]. These findings provide initial support for the diametric model, which suggests that the relationship between Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and SSC can be viewed as that ASC and SSC are on opposite extremes of a social-cognition continuum, in which social-cognitive skills are underdeveloped in ASC and overdeveloped in SSC [2, 28]
Based on the results of the study of Abu-Akel et al [27], we investigated if the cooccurrence is related to better performance on social cognition tasks compared to high levels of either autistic-like experiences or psychotic-like experiences, as the combined traits would have an ameliorating effect on one another, supporting the diametric model
Summary
Both autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and schizophrenia spectrum conditions (SSC) are neurocognitive conditions characterized by altered social-cognitive functioning. Since their early conception, much attention has been paid to describing the overlap and differences between ASC and SSC [1, 2]. Much attention has been paid to describing the overlap and differences between ASC and SSC [1, 2] Both conditions and their subclinical expressions are related to a decrease in social or emotional understanding, difficulties during social interactions and problems in interpersonal relationships [3,4,5,6]. The study was conducted in a non-clinical sample, which avoids confounds that may arise in clinical groups, for example use of medication, differences in attention and motivation which can impact the performance on cognitive tasks, and the presence of comorbidities or interacting cognitive difficulties [7]
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