Abstrakt

Effects of autistic traits and context use on social cognitions a mediation analysis.

Mitsuhiko Ishikawa, Shoji Itakura, Hiroki Tanabe

The reasons that people with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have social difficulties have been a source of debate. One possibility is the idea of context blindness, which stipulates that the lack of spontaneous use of contextual information may be the core deficit of ASD. Here, we examined how autistic traits and the use of context influence social cognitions. Participants were 32 typically functioning adults whose autistic traits were measured to render an Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). All participants completed four cognitive tasks: the Embedded Figures Test, a linguistic context judgement task, a social context judgement task, and a Director (perspectivetaking) task. The mediation models were examined via structural equation modelling. The communication factor of the AQ predicted linguistic context use and perspective-taking ability. Linguistic context use explained variance in perspective-taking. However, the indirect effect from the communication factor to perspective-taking through the use of context was not significant. Use of linguistic context may be strongly and independently related to social ability.