New research challenges Western assumptions about autistic social cognition

A new study found that non-autistic U.K. adults are less able to understand animations (representing specific words) generated by autistic individuals compared to animations generated by non-autistic individuals. In contrast, in the Japanese group, there were no differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals in their understanding of animations generated by autistic individuals. The research was published in Molecular Autism.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by differences in social communication, sensory processing, and patterns of interests and behavior. Autistic people tend to perceive, process, and respond to information in ways that differ from how non-autistic individuals do. Their brains process and interpret information in a different way than non-autistic individuals. This often creates problems in communication between autistic and non-autistic individuals.

An important aspect of these communication problems is that non-autistic people tend to assume their own social intuitions are universal. This leads them to misinterpret autistic communication styles, such as direct speech, reduced eye contact, or atypical prosody (rhythm, stress, pitch, intonation patterns, and the overall way one speaks). As a result, non-autistic individuals may misunderstand the intentions of autistic people even when autistic people communicate clearly from their own perspective.

Differences in sensory experience can also cause behaviors in autistic individuals that are misread as disinterest, rudeness, or withdrawal. Social norms that are unspoken or context-dependent are particularly challenging for autistic individuals to understand. Research suggests this problem in understanding goes in both directions (non-autistic people not understanding autistic individuals and vice versa). This is sometimes called the double empathy problem.

Study author Bianca A. Schuster and her colleagues wanted to explore in more detail the issues autistic and non-autistic individuals have in understanding each other. These authors refer to this as bi-directional mentalizing difficulties. They wanted to know whether such difficulties are universal across different cultures. In particular, they wanted to know whether these difficulties in understanding are present in non-Western cultures as well. They chose to compare the Japanese culture with the U.K. culture.

Study participants were 48 Japanese (25 autistic, 23 non-autistic) and 49 U.K.-based adults (25 autistic, 24 non-autistic). To be enrolled in the study, participants were required to have lived in the respective country for a minimum of 10 years.

All autistic participants had a clinical diagnosis of autism or autism spectrum disorder. In the U.K. sample, the autistic group was significantly older than the non-autistic group (average age of 32 years vs. 24 years). In the Japanese sample, the age gap was smaller and not statistically significant (29 years vs. 27 years), but the groups were not matched on IQ.

First, participants were asked to complete a version of the animations mentalizing task. Participants created short videos in which they used interacting triangles to depict specific mental state and non-mental state words. The mental state words to be depicted were “arguing”, “surprising”, and “teasing”. The non-mental state words were “following”, “searching”, and “dancing”. For each of these words, participants generated one animation by moving two triangles around the touchscreen of a tablet.

After this, they viewed animations created by other participants. For each animation, they had to indicate to what extent, on a scale from 0 to 100, they thought it represented each of the 6 possible words.

Results showed that non-autistic participants from the U.K. were worse at interpreting animations created by autistic individuals than animations created by non-autistic individuals. In contrast, autistic individuals were similarly accurate in interpreting both animations created by autistic and those created by non-autistic individuals. The study found that this difficulty in understanding autistic-generated animations applied to both mental state and non-mental state words.

In Japan, there were no differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals in their accuracy in understanding animations. Additionally, Japanese participants showed better accuracy than U.K. participants, and all autistic participants showed higher accuracy for animations generated by Japanese autistic participants (compared to those generated by U.K. autistic participants).

“The present study provides new evidence to support a perspective shift in social cognition research, away from individual impairments towards the dynamic interplay between participants of social exchanges. Our results thus support a reframing of autism from a social communication disorder to a ‘description encompassing a broad range of developmental differences and experiences’,” study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of autism. However, study authors note that the two U.K. groups were not matched on age, while the two Japanese groups differed in cognitive abilities (IQ). Also, the animations task used has important methodological limitations which may disadvantage autistic individuals. It might not have been a very good indicator of the mentalizing abilities of the compared groups.

The paper, “A cross‑cultural examination of bi‑directional mentalising in autistic and non‑autistic adults,” was authored by Bianca A. Schuster, Y. Okamoto, T. Takahashi, Y. Kurihara, C. T. Keating, J. L. Cook, H. Kosaka, M. Ide, H. Naruse, C. Kraaijkamp, and R. Osu.