Does Faux Pas Detection in Adult Autism Reflect Differences in Social Cognition or Decision-Making Abilities?
43 typically-developed adults and 35 adults with ASD performed a cartoon faux pas test. Adults with ASD apparently over-detected faux pas despite good comprehension abilities, and were generally slower at responding. Signal detection analysis demonstrated that the ASD participants had significantly greater difficulty detecting whether a cartoon depicted a faux pas and showed a liberal response bias. Test item analysis demonstrated that the ASD group were not in agreement with a reference control group (n = 69) about which non-faux pas items were most difficult. These results suggest that the participants with ASD had a primary problem with faux pas detection, but that there is another factor at work, possibly compensatory, that relates to their choice of a liberal response criterion.
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.
Flora I
FI
Thiébaut
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.
Sarah J
SJ
White
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.
Annabel
A
Walsh
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.
Solja K
SK
Klargaard
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.
Hsuan-Chen
HC
Wu
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.|Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, UK.
Geraint
G
Rees
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK. p.burgess@ucl.ac.uk.
Paul W
PW
Burgess
D000328:Adult; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D032882:Comprehension; D003657:Decision Making; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D012919:Social Behavior
Autism spectrum disorder; Compensatory strategy; Decision making; Executive function; Faux pas; Open-ended; Social cognition