1. Elaine Bucknam St. Mary’s College of Maryland ASSESSING SOCIAL MOTIVATION AND COGNITION IN ADOLESCENTS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER THROUGH A MODIFIED FALSE BELIEF TASK

2.  Characterized by major deficits in:  Social interaction  Nonverbal communication  Sustaining relationships  High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD)  Characterized by same social deficits as ASD  Average to above average IQ  Population often targeted for research (APA, 2013; CDC, 2014; Frith, 2003) AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER (ASD) 2

3.  Theory of Mind—recognition others experience mental states that differ from your own.  Emotions, desires, beliefs, etc.  Important in social cognition  Thought to be impaired in ASD  ToM proficiency assessed with false-belief tasks (Scheeren et al., 2013; Frith, 2003) SOCIAL COGNITION AND ToM 3

4. FALSE BELIEF TASK: SALLY & ANNE (Frith, 2003) 4

5.  Persons with HFASD do pass false belief tasks  Logically, they understand the concept of ToM  However, persons with HFASD don’t apply ToM understanding to social interactions  Still show the same social impairments as persons with ASD. (Bloom & German, 2000; Scheern et al., 2013) FALSE BELIEF TASKS AND HFASD 5

6.  There are many aspects of social ability, social cognition is only one  Impairment in other aspects of social ability could be present in HFASD  Social Motivation: The desire to actively interact with others  Deficits in social motivation could contribute to impairments seen in HFASD.  Can social cognition and social motivation be assessed using a single method? (Chevallier et al., 2012) ONLY SOCIAL COGNITION? 6

7. Modified False Belief Tasks Social Cognition (ToM) Social Motivation CONCEPTUAL VARIABLES 7

8.  HFASD participants and typical participants will perform similarly on questions assessing social cognition (ToM).  Typical participants will perform significantly better than their HFASD counterparts on questions assessing social motivation. HYPOTHESES 8

9. METHOD Read Aloud Live Action VideoAnimated Video Sam has a basket, and (Participant Name) has a box. Sam also has a ball, which he puts in his basket after playing with it. Sam then decides to go for a walk. While Sam is gone, (Participant Name) takes Sam’s ball out of the basket and plays with it. When he finishes playing with the ball, (Participant Name) places it in his box instead of Sam’s basket by mistake. 9

10.  Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)  Assessment of verbal ability, used in lieu of IQ tests  α =.94, test-retest reliability, convergent validity  Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2)  Parent-report measure, assesses behaviors associated with an ASD diagnosis  α =.95, test-restest reliability, predictive validity (Bruni, 2014; Dunn & Dunn, 2004) METHOD 10

11.  Male adolescents (10-13 years)  Typical participants, n = 9  ASD participants, n = 11  Convenience sampling  Summer camps, ASD parent support groups  All participants completed the PPVT, followed by the modified false belief task.  False belief task was video-recorded SAMPLE 11

12. DESCRIPTIVE RESULTS Participant Characteristics in Two Diagnostic Groups 12

13.  Modified False Belief Tasks  Typical participants had significantly higher scores on social cognition questions  t(16) = 2.686, p =.016  There was no significant difference between participants on social motivation questions  t(16) =.742, p =.469  Implicit Social Behaviors  HFASD participants made significantly less eye contact  t(16) = 2.221, p =.041  HFASD participants interrupted significantly more  t(16) = 2.673, p =.017 RESULTS 13

14.  The results of early research on false belief task performance in persons with ASD were replicated  The addition of a social motivation component did not reveal new differences between diagnostic groups  Differences between diagnostic groups were most evident in scores on implicit measures of social ability  Eye contact and interruptions  Small sample size, difference in verbal ability may have influenced results. DISCUSSION 14

15.  What is the best way to measure social ability?  The false belief task remains a controversial measure of ToM and social cognition.  Is it possible to conjointly measure all aspects of social ability?  Should aspects of social ability be measured in isolation?  To better understand ASD, what aspects of social ability are most important to study? DISCUSSION 15

16. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. Bloom, P., & German, T. P. (2000). Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind. Cognition, 77, B25-B31. Retrieved from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/chwe/austen/bloom.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/chwe/austen/bloom.pdf Bruni, T.P. (2014). Test review: Social Responsiveness Scale, Second Edition. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 32, 4365-369. doi: 10.1177/0734282913517525 Chevallier, C., Kohls, G., Troiani, V., Brodkin, E. S., & Schultz, R. T. (2012). The social motivation theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Science, 16, 231-239. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.02.007 Dunn, L.M., & Dunn, L.M. (2004). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)-III-NL. Amsterdam: Harcourt Test. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014). Autism Spectrum Disorder: Data and statistics. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.htmlhttp://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html Frith, U. (2003). Autism: Explaining the enigma. (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Scheeren, A. M., de Rosnay, M., Koot, H. M., & Begeer, S. (2013). Rethinking theory of mind in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(6), 628-635. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12007 REFERENCES 16