Social Cognition in Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Co-twin Control Study

J Isaksson,É Cauvet,A Van’T Westeinde,S Bölte,C Willfors,K Lundin,R Kuja-Halkola,J Neufeld

doi:10.1007/s10803-019-04001-4

Abstract

Alterations in social cognition (SC) are hypothesized to underlie social communication and interaction challenges in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The aetiological underpinnings driving this association remain unclear. We examined SC in 196 twins with ASD, other neurodevelopmental disorders or typical development using the naturalistic Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition. Autism and its severity were assessed with the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2, and autistic traits with the Social Responsiveness Scale-2. Using within twin-pair regression models, controlling for age, sex, IQ, and unmeasured familial confounders such as genetic background and shared-environment, SC correlated with ASD diagnosis, autism severity, and autistic traits. Our findings highlight the importance of SC alterations in autism and suggest a non-shared environmental impact on the association.

Highlights

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a common neurodevelopmental condition with an estimated prevalence of 1–2.5% among children, adolescents and young adults (Christensen et al 2016; Idring et al 2015)
The ASD, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), other neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) and typically developing individuals (TD) groups differed for social cognition (SC) ability (χ2(4) = 39.17; p < 0.001), hypermentalizing (χ2(4) = 16.31, p = 0.003), hypomentalizing (χ2(4) = 24.35; p < 0.001) and concrete cognition (χ2(4) = 27.94; p < 0.001), with ASD cases exhibiting a reduced total SC ability (p < 0.001), more hypermentalizing (p = 0.002), hypomentalizing (p < 0.001) and concrete cognition (p < 0.001) compared to TDs (Table 2 and Fig. 3)
The ASD cases, as opposed to participants with ADHD and other NDDs, showed more hypomentalizing and concrete cognition compared to TDs (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a common neurodevelopmental condition with an estimated prevalence of 1–2.5% among children, adolescents and young adults (Christensen et al 2016; Idring et al 2015). Similar results were reported by another twin study (Ronald et al 2006), where environmental influences, foremost nonshared, accounted for most of the variation in 9-year-olds attribution to the characters’ thoughts and feelings on the Strange Stories test. In this classic SC test the participant is presented with vignettes of social interactions and asked to explain why a character says something that is not literally true, testing the ability to infer mental states in the character. Girls outperformed boys in the study by Hughes et al (2005), but not in Ronald et al (2006)

Methods

Results

Conclusion