Explaining Variance in Social Symptoms of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Diana Alkire, Katherine Rice Warnell, Laura Anderson Kirby and 2 others
PMID 32676827WHAT IT FOUND
Among 49 verbal autistic children, parent-reported emotional contagion tracked ADOS social symptoms more closely than theory of mind, biological motion, social reward, or anxiety.
Theory of mind was not the main predictor, so social difficulties may not all stem from mindreading deficits.
Key findings
01In 49 autistic children, parent-rated emotional contagion was the strongest predictor of ADOS social symptom severity; its unique importance weight was .112, higher than biological motion (.046), age (.027), verbal-cognitive ToM (.023), and verbal IQ (.020).
02Theory of mind measures were not the main predictors: none of the applied ToM subscales appeared in the six best models, and verbal-cognitive ToM explained 3.4% of variance in one model versus 12.7% for emotional contagion.
03For children low in parent-reported social anxiety, better verbal-cognitive ToM was associated with lower ADOS social symptoms, but this pattern was absent for high anxiety and did not hold when social anxiety was child-reported.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This was a cross-sectional association study, not a treatment trial, so it cannot show that changing emotional contagion, ToM, or anxiety would improve social symptoms. The autistic sample was narrow: 49 children with IQ above 80, mostly high socioeconomic status, mostly Caucasian males, and no intellectual or language disability, so findings may not apply to many autistic patients. The outcome was ADOS-2 Social Affect during a structured assessment, not real-world peer interaction or functional communication. Emotional contagion was parent-reported and may reflect visible emotional display rather than internal experience; the authors note overlap with ADOS items about shared enjoyment and facial expressions. Over 70% of variance in social symptoms was unexplained, even with all predictors. The social anxiety interaction was based on a small subgroup and did not hold with child-reported anxiety.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that emotional contagion causes social symptoms or that theory of mind is irrelevant for all autistic children. This was a cross-sectional study of 49 verbal, high-functioning children, and emotional contagion was parent-reported, so the finding may reflect how emotions are displayed and judged rather than how they are experienced.