title: Emotional understanding, cooperation, and social behavior in high-functioning children with autism.
abstract: In contrast to typically developing children, children with autism rarely exhibit cooperative social behavior. To examine whether this problem reflects global developmental delays or autism-specific deficits, the present study compared cooperation, emotional understanding, personality characteristics, and social behavior of 10 children with autism who had average IQ to those of 16 children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and 10 typically developing children. In cooperative behavior, level of emotional understanding, and aloof behavior, the autism group outperformed the ADHD/ODD group and did not differ significantly from typically developing children. However, the autism group showed worse emotion recognition and more active-but-odd behavior than the other groups. The results indicate that high-functioning children with autism can develop cooperative social behavior and advanced theory of mind abilities, but continue to show deficits in identifying emotions and displaying socially appropriate behavior.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Washington State University, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Downs
authors.forename: Tristram
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000209:etiology; D019958:Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders / Q000209:etiology; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014888:Wechsler Scales