title: Equal egocentric bias in school-aged children with and without autism spectrum disorders.
abstract: Egocentric bias is a core feature of autism. This phenomenon has been studied using the false belief task. However, typically developing children who pass categorical (pass or fail) false belief tasks may still show subtle egocentric bias. We examined 7- to 13-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n=76) or typical development (n=113) using tasks with a continuous response scale: a modified false belief task and a visual hindsight bias task. All children showed robust egocentric bias on both tasks, but no group effects were found. Our large sample size, coupled with our sensitive tasks and resoundingly null group effects, indicate that children with and without ASD possess more similar egocentric tendencies than previously reported.
authors.affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Section Clinical Developmental Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. Electronic address: s.begeer@vu.nl.
authors.forename: Sander
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Begeer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, British Columbia V3W 2M8, Canada.
authors.forename: Daniel M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Bernstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, British Columbia V3W 2M8, Canada; Albert Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Andre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aßfalg
authors.affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Section Clinical Developmental Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Halima
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Azdad
authors.affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Section Clinical Developmental Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Tessa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Glasbergen
authors.affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Section Clinical Developmental Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marlies
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wierda
authors.affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Section Clinical Developmental Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Hans M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Koot
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Adolescent; Autism; Egocentric bias; False belief; Hindsight; Theory of mind