Back to Search
Start Over
An Electrocortical Measure Associated With Metarepresentation Mediates the Relationship Between Autism Symptoms and Theory of Mind
- Source :
- Clinical Psychological Science. 10:324-339
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- SAGE Publications, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Impairments in theory of mind (ToM)—long considered common among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)—are in fact highly heterogeneous across this population. Although such heterogeneity should be reflected in differential recruitment of neural mechanisms during ToM reasoning, no research has yet uncovered a mechanism that explains these individual differences. In this study, 78 (48 with ASD) adolescents viewed ToM vignettes and made mental-state inferences about characters’ behavior while participant electrophysiology was concurrently recorded. Two candidate event-related-potentials (ERPs)—the late positive complex (LPC) and the late slow wave (LSW)—were successfully elicited. LPC scores correlated positively with ToM accuracy and negatively with ASD symptom severity. Note that the LPC partially mediated the relationship between ASD symptoms and ToM accuracy, which suggests that this ERP component, thought to represent cognitive metarepresentation, may help explain differences in ToM performance in some individuals with ASD.
- Subjects :
- education.field_of_study
medicine.diagnostic_test
05 social sciences
Population
Measure (physics)
Electroencephalography
medicine.disease
behavioral disciplines and activities
050105 experimental psychology
Clinical Psychology
Social cognition
Autism spectrum disorder
Theory of mind
mental disorders
medicine
Autism
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Metarepresentation
Psychology
education
050104 developmental & child psychology
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 21677034 and 21677026
- Volume :
- 10
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Clinical Psychological Science
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........870e32403cb290a676f696657d6e9185
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026211021975