Social Cognition in Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Co-twin Control Study.
J Isaksson, A Van't Westeinde, É Cauvet and 5 others
PMID 30972652WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic participants were worse at inferring characters' thoughts and feelings in a social movie than typically developing peers, and also overinterpreted or underinterpreted social cues.
These links held within twin pairs, including identical twins.
Key findings
01The ASD group scored lower on total social cognition and showed more overinterpretation, underinterpretation, and concrete interpretation of social cues than the typically developing group.
02Lower total social cognition was associated with higher autism symptom severity and more autistic traits, both across the sample and within twin pairs.
03In monozygotic twin pairs only, lower social cognition remained associated with higher autism severity and autistic traits, while the association with ASD diagnosis was only a trend.
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 clinically enriched and not randomly selected from the general population, so between-pair results may not apply to non-clinical groups. Several groups were small, especially the other neurodevelopmental disorder group with 11 participants and the monozygotic ASD-discordant pairs with 18, limiting confidence in subgroup findings. The study used a single social cognition measure, mostly explicit mental-state inference, so it may miss implicit social processing that is also relevant in autism. Typically developing twins were not required to be free of other psychiatric problems such as depression or anxiety, which can also affect social cognition. The paper did not test a treatment, so it provides no direct evidence that social cognition training improves autism. Twin findings may not generalise to non-twin populations, although the paper cites prior work suggesting twins and non-twins are similar for autism prevalence and social cognition.
Declared interests
Funded by Vetenskapsrådet, VINNOVA, FORTE, Hjärnfonden, Stockholm Brain Institute, Autism and Asperger Association Stockholm, and other Swedish foundations. The article does not report individual author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that poor social cognition causes autism or that social cognition training will improve autism. This was an observational twin study of associations, not a treatment trial. The authors' mention of social cognition training is a suggestion, not a tested effect.