Poster #118 - Autism spectrum traits predict better communicative reasoning ability in late but not early adolescence

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Challenges in social communication are core characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Prior research shows various difficulties in social cognition including communicative abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder, yet similar or even better social psychological skills in adults with autistic spectrum traits. Here, by combining tools and methods from developmental psychology, computational pragmatics, game theory, and computational psychiatry, we investigated whether and how autistic spectrum traits influence the ability to infer others’ communicative intent based on the communicative signal and context during the transition from childhood to adulthood.

A total of 541 subjects (ages 10-20) participated in a referential communication game previously established for examining the neural and cognitive processes of communicative reasoning ability in adults and children. We evaluated autistic spectrum traits using the Autism Spectrum Quotient, a well-validated measure of autistic symptoms in non-clinical samples.

Consistent with prior work, our data show that the ability to recover a speaker’s intention develops continuously from childhood into adulthood. Interestingly, autistic spectrum traits exhibit divergent effects on communicative performance in subjects at different development stages. Higher autistic spectrum traits predict better communicative reasoning performance in subjects during their late adolescence (ages 16-20), but lower performance during early adolescence (especially ages 10-11). Results of computational modeling further show dissociable cognitive operations that are differentially associated with autistic spectrum traits at different development stages. The association between autistic spectrum traits and communicative performance in early adolescence is mediated by the extent to which a subject was engaged in the egocentric processing of communicative contexts. By contrast, the association seen in late adolescence is mediated by how well a subject could mentally simulate what a speaker would say given a communicative goal and context. Finally, the individual differences in the key cognitive operation quantified by the computational modeling of communicative behavior can modulate how autistic spectrum traits influence the self-reported intimate exchange of real-life friendship.

Together, our findings provide quantitative evidence that autistic spectrum traits differentially influence communicative reasoning ability across development. The data suggest that such divergent effects may reflect a learnable cognitive strategy of mentally simulating social partners’ decisions in specific contexts, shedding light on potential ASD interventions.

Authors

• Cong Wang, Peking University
  Presenting Author

• Yanjie Su, Peking University

• Li Yi, Department of Psychology, Peking University

• Lusha Zhu, Peking University