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Moral and Social Reasoning in Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Abstract

This study compared moral and social reasoning in individuals with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Ten familiar schoolyard transgressions were shown to 18 participants with and 18 participants without ASD. They judged the appropriateness of the behavior and explained their judgments. Analysis of the rationales revealed that participants with typical development used significantly more abstract rules than participants with ASD, who provided more nonspecific condemnations of the behaviors. Both groups judged social conventional transgressions to be more context-bound than moral transgressions, with this distinction more pronounced in typically developing individuals, who also provided significantly more examples of situations in which the depicted behaviors would be acceptable. The educational implications of these findings for individuals with ASD are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel

    Cory Shulman & Noa Shiling

  2. David Yellin Academic College of Education, Jerusalem, Israel

    Ainat Guberman

  3. Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Nirit Bauminger

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  1. Cory Shulman
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  2. Ainat Guberman
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  3. Noa Shiling
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  4. Nirit Bauminger
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Correspondence to Cory Shulman.

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Shulman, C., Guberman, A., Shiling, N. et al. Moral and Social Reasoning in Autism Spectrum Disorders. J Autism Dev Disord 42, 1364–1376 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1369-8

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