Abstract
This brief report is a partial replication of the study by Jackson and Atance (J Dev Disabil 14:40–45, 2008) assessing nonverbal Self-based and Mechanical-based future thinking (FT) in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In a first step, these tasks were administered to 30 children with ASD. The two Self-based tasks were then modified as a verbal component could not be completely ruled out. Consequently, 77 children with ASD and 77 children with typical development received the modified Self-based FT tasks and the Mechanical-based FT tasks. We partially replicated the previous findings. Participants with ASD had impaired FT in both kinds of tasks and both groups performed better on tasks assessing Mechanical-based FT than Self-based FT. These results suggest that impairments of FT in ASD are not limited to Self-Projection.
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Acknowledgments
Funding for this study was provided by Research Institute, IRCCS “Eugenio Medea” to A.M. The authors wish to thank Dr. Stefano Mercanti e Dr. Patrizio Pasqualetti for their help in the statistical and linguistic revision of the manuscript.
Author Contributions
Andrea Marini supervised the recruitment of the participants and the administration of the tasks, ran the statistics and wrote the paper. Francesco Ferretti planned the study, adapted the original tests, supervised the recruitment of the participants and contributed to the interpretation of the data. Alessandra Chiera, Rita Magni, Ines Adornetti and Serena Nicchiarelli contributed to the adaptation of the original tests, recruited the participants, administered the tasks and contributed to the interpretation of the data. Stefano Vicari and Giovanni Valeri supervised the recruitment of the participants and the administration of the tasks and contributed to the interpretation of the data.
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All procedures were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Marini, A., Ferretti, F., Chiera, A. et al. Brief Report: Self-Based and Mechanical-Based Future Thinking in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 46, 3353–3360 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-016-2867-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-016-2867-5