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Mind-Reading in Young Adults with ASD: Does Structure Matter?

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Abstract

This study further elaborates on the mind-reading impairments of young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The hypothesis is that differences in mind-reading abilities between subjects with ASD and control subjects become more apparent when they have to infer thoughts and feelings of other persons in a less structured or more chaotic conversation, than when they have to do so in a more structured conversation. Conform to the empathic accuracy design, subjects viewed two videotaped interactions depicting two strangers and attempted to infer thoughts and feelings. One of the videotaped conversations was less structured than in the other. The results underscore the significance of structure to the mind-reading abilities of young adults with ASD.

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Notes

  1. Sample sentences uttered by the targets in the second videotape were: “We have to know each other very well, so tell me everything about your studies”, “What’s the next question on the list?” or “Do we share some interests?” (see Appendix A).

  2. The 13 items were synonyms or were connected semantically with each other (e.g. “structured”, “organized“, “surveyable”, “coherent”, and “predictable”).

  3. A non-parametric test (Mann–Whitney U) revealed similar results, with z = −3.35, p ≤ 0.001 for video 1 and z = −1.66, ns, for video 2. The mean rank for the controls was 28.98 on video 1 and 25.70 on video 2, while the mean rank for the ASD group was 16.02 on video 1 and 19.30 on video 2.

  4. \( \begin{aligned}{} z_{1} - z_{2} \\ \overline{{{\sqrt {{\frac{1} {{n_{1} - 3}} + \frac{1} {{n_{2} - 3}}} }}}} . \\ \end{aligned} \)

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Acknowledgment

This study was supported by a research grant (3.G.009.000) of the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders, Belgium. We would like to thank our undergraduate research assistants Herlinde Van de Velde, Sandra Van Hoebrouck, Veerle Poppe and Maaike De Clerck for help in data collection. We are indebted to the adults and their parents, who participated in the present study.

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Author notes

  1. Koen Ponnet

    Present address: Research Centre for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Koen Ponnet, Ann Buysse & Herbert Roeyers

  2. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Armand De Clercq

Authors
  1. Koen Ponnet
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  2. Ann Buysse
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Koen Ponnet.

Appendix A

Appendix A

The eight-point list to structure video 2

  1. 1.

    What’s your name?

  2. 2.

    Where do you live?

  3. 3.

    How do you come to be here?

  4. 4.

    Where do you work or study?

  5. 5.

    What are your leisure activities?

  6. 6.

    How old are you?

  7. 7.

    Do you have specific hobbies?

  8. 8.

    What are our common interests?

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Ponnet, K., Buysse, A., Roeyers, H. et al. Mind-Reading in Young Adults with ASD: Does Structure Matter?. J Autism Dev Disord 38, 905–918 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0462-5

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