Individuals diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often find it difficult to attribute mental states to others and to understand their own and others’ behaviour (Theory of Mind, [ToM]/social cognition). These difficulties can affect their moral judgements. The present article focuses on evidence on moral reasoning and ToM, with the aim of analysing theoretical and review research into autism. The weight intention has in moral reasoning and the causal relation between mental states, actions and outcomes is an essential part of this study. Evidence in the field of autism reports how autistic people would not be able to make moral judgements based on the agent’s intention. Instead, they would reason based on the outcomes of the action. For example, this can be translated into misunderstandings, malicious judgements or ‘over-blaming’ in accidental situations (ambiguous valences). These impairments can confirm the association between ToM and moral reasoning.

Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. establishes a goal; (ii) intention-deliberate: the agent may make a plan to obtain his/her goal; (iii) control of the action: the agent carries out the actions included in that plan; and (iv) outcome: that action triggers an outcome or consequence. Thus, to evaluate the morality of the agent, the observer should correctly infer the agent's desires (whether they are prosocial or antisocial), beliefs (whether the agent has true or false beliefs according to reality) and the agent's intention (whether the act was carried out on purpose or accidentally) and, finally, use this information to decide whether the agent is a good or bad person, or even his/her innocence or guilt in the event. According to this model, the moral evaluation of the agent would be in some cases independent of the outcome. For example, we could imagine this situation: Mark wants to kill a bird and he has the deliberate intention of doing it, but finally, he failed to do it. Mark will be judged as a "bad person" for the mere presence of a malicious desire (regardless of whether the bird does not die), true belief (he knows he can kill the bird using, for example, a stone) and his deliberate intention of doing this action, which speaks strongly against his morality than the final outcome. Thus, it seems that, first, the moral judgements that a person makes about another agent will depend mostly on the inferences made about the agent's desires, beliefs and intention, and not only on the outcome of his/her action (as in the case of the bird). Second, another judgement can be contemplated in the bird situation: judgements of moral wrongness, which will depend on the agent's mental states and also the agent's action, e.g. if the child kills the bird on purpose, this will be wrong because of the action itself, but also because the child planned it deliberately. Finally, according to Cushman (2015), judgments concerning punishment will depend not only on actions and mental states, but also on the outcome caused by his/her actions (in this case, laws make no provision for his/her punishment). Therefore, the mature development of the capacity for understanding mental states will be important for adequate moral reasoning. For this reason, younger children between 3 and 4 years of age usually focus more on the outcome (e.g., the child hit his sister and now she is crying), and less on the intent or the mental states of the agent (i.e. he did not mean any harm or he did not do it on purpose). See Cushman, Sheketoff, Wharton, and Carey (2013) and Margoni and Surian (2017), for more information.

El presente estudio tiene una doble finalidad. La primera es analizar dos de las variables implicadas en la comprensión de las meteduras de pata (MP) en el autismo (Cociente Intelectual; CI, y la Falsa Creencia; FC). La segunda, examinar en detalle las dificultades encontradas en la tarea de MP, dividida la población con autismo en dos grupos según su CI (Grupo 1= rango CI 100-120, Grupo 2 = rango CI 70-85). De dicha tarea de MP, se adaptaron cuatro historias (viñetas y narración) de Baron-Cohen, O’Riordan, Stone, Jones y Plaisted (1999), y se administraron a los dos grupos de niños y pre-adolescente con autismo (N = 34) de entre 7 y 12 años (M = 9.6, DE = 1.55), que las resolvieron a partir de respuestas de elección dicotómica y de explicación verbal. Los resultados demuestran la capacidad predictiva del CI total (r = 0.53; p < 0.001; R2 = 0.28) y de la FC (r = 0.51; p < 0.001; R2 = 0.26). El 40 % de la variabilidad de la tarea de MP se vio explicada por las variables predictores FC y Vocabulario. Además, se encontraron diferencias significativas entre grupos (el Grupo 1 respondió mejor que el Grupo 2) tanto en respuestas de elección forzada personaje (ii) e ignorancia (vii) y la suma total como en su explicación verbal. Estos resultados se discuten más detalladamente debido a su posible repercusión en la vida diaria de las personas con autismo.

Av/ Vicent Sos Baynat s/n 12071 Castellón (Spain) children, families, teachers and professors who kindly participated in this study. Garcia-Molina, I., Clemente-Estevan, R. A., & Andrés-Roqueta, C. (2020). Investigating moral judgements in autistic children: integrating the observer's and the speaker's mind.