Moral Judgment in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Background: Individuals autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulties in social interaction and communication. Research shows that their difficulties in communication may result from theory of mind, i.e., understanding what other people’s thought. However, to make moral judgment, we often need to refer people’s intention during our moral and social reasoning.

Objectives: The study investigated moral and social reasoning in adolescents with ASD. It was aimed to explore the relation between theory of mind and moral judgment. The second goal was to examine whether moral judgment of adolescents with ASD differed from that of typically developed adolescents? An instrument Moral Decision-making Test (MDT) was developed to compare performance of adolescents with ASD with typically developed adolescents.  

Methods: 21 adolescents with ASD (ages 15.03±1.75) and 33 typically developed adolescents (ages 14.08±1.33) participated in the study. There were recruited from schools in Kaohsiung city in Taiwan. All participants’ IQs were in the normal range and passed the first-order false belief questions. Their family’s socioeconomic status was also controlled. All participants with ASD were re-diagnosed by two clinical psychiatrists as Asperger syndrome or autism spectrum disorders. The average scores of Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test were 113.62 for the ASD group. The instrument used to assess participants’ moral judgment was self-developed Moral Decision-making Test (MDT). The MDT consisted of 12 questions. Each question represented one situation which the participants were asked whether they would offer help. People in the questions who needed help included participants’ mothers, friends, enemies, or strangers.  

Results: The moral judgment for the ASD group did not tend to be context-dependent. A significant difference between the ASD and typically developed groups is taking actions according to interpersonal relationships. The ASD group seldom took the interpersonal relationships into account when they made moral judgment. As to the relation between MDT and advanced theory of mind questions, the two scores were significant related for the typically developed group and not significant related for the ASD group.

Conclusions: The moral judgment of participants with ASD differing from the typically developed participants may be resulted from deficits in executive functioning, theory of mind, and weak central coherence. They all took part in the process when participants with ASD make social reasoning and moral judgment.