Prediction of social behavior in autism spectrum disorders: Explicit versus implicit social cognition.
Cara M Keifer, Amori Yee Mikami, James P Morris and 2 others
PMID 32484000WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic youth who took longer to infer others’ thoughts, generated less creative social responses, and processed faces and voices slowly showed more social communication difficulties.
This was not a treatment study.
Key findings
01A combination of poorer social creativity, poorer theory-of-mind answers, and slower theory-of-mind reaction time was associated with more clinician-rated social communication difficulties. The model accounted for 43.03% of the variation in those ratings.
02The same combination was associated with more parent-reported social communication difficulties. The model accounted for 24.60% of the variation in parent ratings.
03Slower processing of faces and voices, measured by brain-wave timing, was associated with more low-level peer interactions, accounting for 27.21% of the variation in those observed interactions. The model for positive peer interactions was not interpretable.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was small: 42 youths were consented, but 34 were analyzed, and 8 were excluded for missing data. The study included only autistic youth, so it does not show whether the same patterns occur in typically developing youth or in youth with other conditions. It measured social cognition and social behavior in the same participants, so it cannot show that one caused the other. The study was not an intervention trial, so it cannot show that changing these social-cognitive processes improves social behavior. Many measures were lab-based, including brain-wave timing, and the authors noted they are impractical for ordinary clinical settings. The model treats all differences, including measurement error, as meaningful, so some predicted differences may reflect noise. The analysis could not fully account for the fact that peers were tested in dyads. One participant did not complete the peer interaction task, and negative interaction was omitted because few incidents occurred. The model for positive peer interaction was not interpretable. The study did not account for co-occurring conditions such as anxiety, ADHD, or oppositional defiant disorder, which can affect social functioning.
Declared interests
The article lists government research support from the NIH and non-U.S. government sources. The declaration states that Cara Keifer has no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that training implicit social cognition improves social behavior. This was a lab prediction study in 34 youths with ASD, not an intervention trial, and the measures were lab-based. It only shows associations between certain test scores and social behavior ratings.