Predicting others’ actions is a crucial ability that underlies cognitive and social development. Typically developing children predict agents’ actions relying on social cues such as the agent’s head and gaze direction and her emotional expressions. In the current study, we investigated to what extent children with autism are able to identify and use such signals to predict an agent’s behavior.
Objectives:
The aim of the study is to test 4 hypotheses:
(1) Children with autism will be able to predict an agent’s action by relying on the most likely end-state of the action and the standard use of the materials
(2) Unlike typically developing children, children with autism will not be able to predict the agent’s behavior relying on the agent’s head and gaze direction
(3) Unlike typically developing children, children with autism will not be able to predict the agent’s behavior by relying on the agent’s emotional expressions
(4) Children with autism will fail to predict the agent’s behavior as a consequence of diminished attention to changes in the agent’s head direction and emotional expressions
Methods: 18 8- to 12-year old children with high functioning autism and typically developing subjects matched for IQ and age observed a series of videos showing a person performing an action. The videos stopped before the action was done and participants were asked to complete the observed action. There were three conditions. In condition 1 the agent’s face was neutral and the action itself was sufficient to predict the agent’s behavior. In condition 2 the agent’s behavior could be predicted only by considering the agent’s gaze direction. In condition 3 the agent’s behavior could be predicted only by considering her emotional expressions. During the observation of the videos, participants’ eye movements were recorded using an eye-tracking system.
Results:
As predicted, in condition 1 the two groups did not differ in the ability to predict the agent’s behavior relying on the most likely end-state of the action. In condition 2, however, children with autism showed significant difficulties in predicting the agent’s behavior on the basis of her gaze direction. Eye-tracking analysis revealed that that was a consequence of their diminished attention the agent’s face. In condition 3, surprisingly, both groups were able to predict the agent’s behavior based on her emotional expressions. Eye-tracking analyses revealed that in this condition children were looking at the agent’s face as much as participants in the control group.
Conclusions:
Difficulty in predicting others’ actions is not a unitary phenomenon in autism. Children with autism might not be able to predict others’ behavior because they do not detect referential cues such as an agent’s gaze and head turning. However, when the agent displays emotional expressions, children with autism pay “normal” attention to her face and successfully predict her actions. Implications for treatment will be discussed.