Autistic Adults Show Similar Performance and Sensitivity to Social Cues on a Visual Perspective Taking Task as Non-autistic Adults.
Richard J O'Connor, Joshua L Plant, Kevin J Riggs
PMID 35184246WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic adults performed similarly to non-autistic adults on a task requiring them to judge which side of a table an object was on from another person's viewpoint.
Both groups were slower when taking another's perspective, but autistic status did not impair this ability.
Key findings
01Autistic and non-autistic adults showed similar accuracy and reaction time patterns when judging an object's position from another person's perspective.
02In the second experiment, both groups made fewer errors when the actor looked at and reached for the object, suggesting similar sensitivity to social cues.
03Autistic participants were generally slower in the first experiment, but this difference disappeared when the task complexity was reduced in the second experiment.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample consisted of university-educated autistic adults, which may not represent autistic individuals with higher support needs or different educational backgrounds. The tasks were relatively simple and repetitive, potentially allowing participants to use conscious strategies that might not be available in complex, real-world social situations. The study only tested level 2 visual perspective taking (judging how an object appears to another person), not level 1 (judging what another person can see), which may involve different cognitive processes. Small sample sizes in each experiment limit the certainty of the findings, particularly regarding the general slowing observed in Experiment 1.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic adults have no social cognition difficulties. This study specifically tested visual perspective taking on a simple computer task. It does not address broader social communication challenges, which may involve more complex cognitive demands or different types of perspective taking.