Abstract
Sensitivity to intentionality in people with Asperger’s syndrome (AS) and matched controls was investigated using two scenario-based tasks. The first compared intentional and unintentional human actions and physical events leading to the same negative outcomes. The second compared intentional actions that varied in their subjective and objective likelihood of bringing about a negative outcome. Whilst adults with AS did not differ from controls in their judgments of causality, or in their blame judgments in relation to non-mentalistic factors, they showed heightened sensitivity to mentalistic considerations in their attributions of blame. They made greater differentiation than controls between intentional and unintentional actions, and also between actions that the protagonists believed to be likely versus unlikely to lead to negative consequences.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alicke, M. D. (2000). Culpable control and the psychology of blame. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 556–574.
American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text revision). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Borg, J. S., Hynes, C., Van Horn, J., Grafton, S., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2006). Consequences, action, and intention as factors in moral judgments: An fMRI investigation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 803–817.
Buckholtz, J. W., Asplund, C. L., Dux, P. E., Zald, D. H., Gore, J. C., Jones, O. D., et al. (2008). The neural correlates of third-party punishment. Neuron, 60, 930–940.
Carlsmith, K. M., Darley, J. M., & Robinson, P. H. (2002). Why do we punish? Deterrence and just deserts as motives for punishment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 284–299.
Castelli, F., Frith, C. D., Happé, F., & Frith, U. (2002). Autism, Asperger syndrome and brain mechanisms for the attribution of mental states to animated shapes. Brain, 125, 1839–1849.
Channon, S., Fitzpatrick, S., Drury, H., Taylor, I., & Lagnado, D. (2010a). Punishment and sympathy judgments: Is the quality of mercy strained in Asperger’s syndrome? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40, 1219–1226.
Channon, S., Lagnado, D., Drury, H., Matheson, E., Fitzpatrick, S., Shieff, C., et al. (2010b). Causal reasoning and intentionality judgments after frontal brain lesions. Social Cognition, 28, 509–522.
Cushman, F. (2008). Crime and punishment. Cognition, 108, 353–380.
Delis, D. C., Kaplan, E., & Kramer, J. H. (2001). Delis-Kaplan executive function system (D-KEFS). San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.
Försterling, F. (2001). Attribution: An introduction to theories, research, and applications. Hove: Psychology Press.
Frith, U. (2003). Autism: Explaining the enigma. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21–38.
Grant, C. G., Boucher, J., Riggs, K. J., & Grayson, A. (2005). Moral understanding in children with autism. Autism, 9, 317–331.
Greene, J. D., Morelli, S. A., Lowenberg, K., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2008). Cognitive load selectively interferes with utilitarian moral judgment. Cognition, 107, 1144–1154.
Greene, J. D., Nystrom, L. E., Engell, A. D., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, 44, 389–400.
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814–834.
Happé, F. (1994). An advanced test of theory of mind: Understanding of story characters’ thoughts and feelings by able autistic, mentally handicapped and normal children and adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 129–154.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Wiley: New York.
Hill, E. L. (2004). Executive dysfunction in autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 26–32.
Hilton, D. J., McClure, J., & Slugoski, B. (2005). Counterfactuals, conditionals and causality: A social psychological perspective. In D. R. Mandel, D. J. Hilton, & P. Catellani (Eds.), The psychology of counterfactual thinking (pp. 44–60). London: Routledge.
Howlin, P. (1997). Autism and Asperger syndrome: Preparing for adulthood. London, UK: Routledge.
Joliffe, T., & Baron-Cohen, S. (1999). The strange stories test: A replication with high-functioning adults with autism or Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29, 395–406.
Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 191–238). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Knobe, J. (2004). Intention, intentional action and moral considerations. Analysis, 64, 181–187.
Lagnado, D. A., & Channon, S. (2008). Judgments of cause and blame: The effects of intentionality and foreseeability. Cognition, 108, 754–770.
Leslie, A. M., Mallon, R., & DiCorcia, J. A. (2006). Transgressors, victims, and cry babies: Is basic moral judgment spared in autism? Social Neuroscience, 1, 270–283.
Lombardo, M. V., Barnes, J. L., Wheelwright, S. J., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2007). Self-referential cognition and empathy in autism. PLoS ONE, 9, 1–11.
Malle, B. F. (2004). How the mind explains behavior: Folk explanations, meaning, and social interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
McClure, J., Hilton, D. J., & Sutton, R. M. (2007). Judgments of voluntary and physical causes in causal chains: Probabilistic and social functionalist criteria for attributions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 879–901.
Minio-Paluello, I., Baron-Cohen, S., Avenanti, A., Walsh, V., & Aglioti, S. M. (2009). Absence of embodied empathy during pain observation in Asperger syndrome. Biological Psychiatry, 65, 55–62.
Moll, J., Eslinger, P. J., & de Oliveira-Souza, R. (2001). Frontopolar and anterior temporal cortex activation in a moral judgment task: Preliminary functional MRI results in normal subjects. Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, 59, 657–664.
Morris, M. W., Moore, P. C., & Sim, D. L. H. (1999). Choosing remedies after accidents: Counterfactual thoughts and the focus on fixing “human error”. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6, 579–585.
Naquin, C. E., & Kurtzberg, T. R. (2004). Human reactions to technological failure: How accidents rooted in technology vs. human error influence judgments of organizational accountability. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 93, 129–141.
Ozonoff, S., South, M., & Provencal, S. (2007). Executive functions in autism: Theory and practice. In J. M. Perez, P. M. Gonzalez, M. L. Comi, & C. Nieto (Eds.), New developments in autism: The future is today (pp. 185–213). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Premack, D. (1990). The infant’s theory of self-propelled objects. Cognition, 36, 1–16.
Rosset, E. (2008). It’s no accident: Our bias for intentional explanations. Cognition, 108, 771–780.
Shaver, K. G. (1985). The attribution of blame: Causality, responsibility, and blameworthiness. New York, NY: Springer.
Wechsler, D. (1997). Wechsler memory scale. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.
Wechsler, D. (2001). Wechsler test of adult reading. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Young, L., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., & Saxe, R. (2007). The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 8235–8240.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the ESRC for supporting this research (grant reference RES-000-23-0959).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Channon, S., Lagnado, D., Fitzpatrick, S. et al. Judgments of Cause and Blame: Sensitivity to Intentionality in Asperger’s Syndrome. J Autism Dev Disord 41, 1534–1542 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1180-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1180-6