International Meeting for Autism Research (London, May 15-17, 2008): Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders Demonstrate Diminished Social Attribution to Ambiguous Visual Displays

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Champagne Terrace/Bordeaux (Novotel London West)

G. L. Wallace , Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, NIMH, Bethesda, MD

B. Yerys , Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders, Children's National Medical Center, George Washington University, Rockville, MD

M. Celano , Child Psychiatry Branch, NIMH, Bethesda, MD

J. James , Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders, Children's National Medical Center, George Washington University, Rockville, MD

J. L. Sokoloff , Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders, Children's National Medical Center, George Washington University, Rockville, MD

L. Kenworthy , Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders, Children's National Medical Center, George Washington University, Rockville, MD

J. N. Giedd , Child Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD

Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) demonstrate a reduced tendency to ascribe social meaning to impoverished scenes of interacting shapes. However, most studies either have included intellectually impaired children with ASDs or have used cues such as character names to prime social attributions to animations of this type.

Objectives: The present study seeks to examine uncued social attribution to interacting geometric shapes in children with high functioning ASDs and its correlation with age.

Methods: 44 children with a high functioning ASD (diagnosed using DSM-IV criteria and scores from the ADI and ADOS) and 44 typically developing (TD) children matched group-wise on age (7-16 years), IQ (80+), and sex ratio (80% male) were shown the “Triangles Playing Tricks” task and asked to provide verbal descriptions of the animations. Data from two types of animations (goal-directed and ‘theory of mind’) were coded by a rater blind to diagnosis, providing two indices of performance: appropriateness and ‘intentionality.’

Results: A significant main effect of group but no significant group by condition interaction was found for intentionality ratings, indicating that children with ASDs were less likely to ascribe intentionality to characters to both types of animations. This could not be explained by discrepant verbal output since no group difference in length of verbal descriptions was noted. Additionally, age was positively associated with both indices of performance on the theory of mind animations for TD, but not ASD children.

Conclusions: High functioning children with ASDs demonstrate a diminished likelihood of assigning intentionality to uncued, impoverished animations of interacting geometric shapes. In contrast to the pattern observed among TD children, theory of mind performance did not improve with age among high functioning children with ASDs.

See more of: Cognition Posters 3
See more of: Poster Presentations