Strategic Deception in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Bob Van Tiel,Mikhail Kissine,Anke Murillo Oosterwijk,Philippine Geelhand,Gaétane Deliens

doi:10.1007/s10803-020-04525-0

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often associated with impaired perspective-taking skills. Deception is an important indicator of perspective-taking, and therefore may be thought to pose difficulties to people with ASD (e.g., Baron-Cohen in J Child Psychol Psychiatry 3:1141–1155, 1992). To test this hypothesis, we asked participants with and without ASD to play a computerised deception game. We found that participants with ASD were equally likely—and in complex cases of deception even more likely—to deceive and detect deception, and learned deception at a faster rate. However, participants with ASD initially deceived less frequently, and were slower at detecting deception. These results suggest that people with ASD readily engage in deception but may do so through conscious and effortful reasoning about other people’s perspective.

Highlights

We perceive and interpret the way other people behave in order to predict their upcoming actions and adjust our own behaviour (e.g., Dennett 1987; Premack and Woodruff 1978; Sellars 1956)
Movement with perspective-taking (e.g., Baron-Cohen 1995), one might expect that people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience difficulties with strategic deception
In Deception-C trials, deception was a prerequisite for capturing the treasure; in Deception-S trials, deception merely led to a higher score

Summary

Introduction

We perceive and interpret the way other people behave in order to predict their upcoming actions and adjust our own behaviour (e.g., Dennett 1987; Premack and Woodruff 1978; Sellars 1956). In the case at hand, the poker player may associate raising with an increased probability of folding based on repeated interactions, without representing the perspective of the other players at all. Such socially learned strategies can serve as fast and frugal alternatives to perspective-taking, and as a (compensatory) strategy for explicitly going through the normally implicit reasoning steps that underlie perspectivetaking (e.g., Blokpoel et al 2012; Dienes and Perner 1999)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion