Imagining counterfactual worlds in autism spectrum disorder.

Abstract

Two experiments are presented which explore online counterfactual processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using eye-tracking. ParticipantsÕ eye movements were tracked while they read factual and counterfactual sentences in an anomaly detection task. In Experiment 1, the sentences depicted everyday counterfactual situations (e.g. If Joanne had remembered her umbrella, her hair would have been dry/wet when she arrived home). Sentences in Experiment 2 depicted counterfactual versions of real world events (e.g. If the Titanic had not hit an iceberg, it would have survived/sunk along with all the passengers).Results from both experiments suggest that counterfactual understanding is undiminished in adults with ASD. In fact, participants with ASD were faster than TD participants to detect anomalies within realistic, discourse-based counterfactuals (Experiment 1). Detection was comparable for TD and ASD groups when understanding could be grounded in knowledge about reality (Experiment 2), though the two groups employed subtly different strategies for responding to and recovering from counterfactual inconsistent words. These data argue against general difficulties in global coherence and complex integration in ASD.

Intact counterfactual emotion processing in autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from eye‐tracking

“…The finding that participants with ASD were faster to detect inconsistencies within a relief scenario than participants in the TD group (disruption first emerged on the critical vs. postcritical region, respectively) is consistent with recent research showing that adults with ASD are able to process possible and impossible counterfactual sentences within a comparable, or even enhanced, time‐frame as TD adults [Black et al, ; Ferguson et al, ]. Moreover, it demonstrates that this ability is intact even when understanding requires a contrastive inference about other peoples' emotions .…”

“…All analysis procedures were preregistered in line with previous research of this kind [Black et al, ; Howard et al, , , ], and the full datasets and analysis scripts are available on the Open Science Framework web pages (see http://www.osf.io/eyztp). An automatic procedure pooled fixations shorter than 80 msec with larger adjacent fixations, excluded fixations shorter than 40 msec that were not within three characters of another fixation and truncated fixations longer than 1200 msec.…”

“…This online measure will therefore provide novel insights about the speed with which people with and without ASD are able to infer counterfactual emotions in others. Moreover, this methodology has been successfully applied to test the comprehension of (nonemotional) counterfactual statements [Ferguson, ; Ferguson & Jayes, ; Ferguson & Sanford, ; Ferguson, Sanford, & Leuthold, ], including in adults with ASD [Black, Williams, & Ferguson, ; Ferguson, Black, & Williams, ].…”

Emotional Processing of Ironic Versus Literal Criticism in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults: Evidence From Eye‐Tracking

“…Finally, our experiment revealed group differences in overall reading time, with adults in the autistic group incurring longer regression path reading times and making more regressions out from the critical and precritical regions compared to the TD control group. This pattern adds to the fairly consistent finding from eye-tracking research to date, suggesting that autistic people employ a more cautious reading strategy, and are more likely to reread text to verify understanding of the intended meaning [Au-Yeung et al, 2015;Black et al, 2018Black et al, , 2019Ferguson et al, 2019;Howard et al, 2017aHoward et al, , 2017bHoward et al, , 2017cSansosti, Was, Rawson, & Remaklus, 2013]. A similar pattern has been reported in neuroimaging research, which suggests that autistic individuals show traces of hyperlexicality, meaning that they focus more on the meaning of words and individual sentences and less on using mental imagery to build a coherent representation of discourse while processing discourse online [Just, Cherkassky, Keller, & Minshew, 2004].…”

“…Hence, the final sample included 49 participants, specifically, 25 autistic adults and 24 TD adults, which is consistent with our preregistered target sample size. This sample size was chosen a priori based on the sample size used in each experiment in Filik et al [2017;N = 28], and to be comparable or even exceed the sample sizes used in previous research that has examined eye movements in reading in autistic and TD adults [e.g., Au-Yeung et al, 2015;Black et al, 2018Black et al, , 2019Ferguson et al, 2019;Howard et al, 2017aHoward et al, , 2017bHoward et al, , 2017c.…”