Psychometric Evaluation of Social Cognitive Measures for Adults with Autism

Abstract

Although social cognition is frequently identified as a target in clinical trials and psychosocial interventions for adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), these efforts are hampered by a lack of consensus and validation of social cognitive measures. The current study provides psychometric evaluation of 11 frequently used measures encompassing different subdomains of social cognition. Adults with autism (N = 103) and typically developing controls (N = 95) completed 11 commonly used social cognitive tasks spanning the domains of emotion processing, social perception, and mentalizing/theory of mind. We examined each measure's internal reliability and sensitivity to group differences, how performance related to general intellectual ability, and alignment of measures with a proposed two‐factor structure of social cognition in ASD. Controls outperformed the ASD group on 8 of the 11 social cognitive tasks, with the largest group differences occurring on two mentalizing measures, The awareness of social inference task (TASIT) and hinting task. In ASD, all tasks demonstrated strong internal consistency and avoided ceiling and floor effects. Social cognitive performance was also related to, but not redundant with, intellectual functioning. We also found support for a two‐factor structure of social cognition, with basic social perception and emotional processing aligning into a lower‐order social perception factor, while mentalizing tasks aligned into a higher‐order social appraisal factor. In sum, eight tasks showed adequate to strong psychometric properties. The psychometric data, effect size estimates, and correlations between measures reported here can be used for study planning for social cognitive interventions in autism. Autism Research 2019, 12: 766–778. © 2019 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Lay Summary We examined 11 tasks that measure how adults with autism perceive and interpret social information. Eight of the tasks were reliable and showed lower performance in adults with autism compared to typically‐developing controls. Task performance was related to but distinguishable from IQ. These measures evaluated here may be useful in assessing the effectiveness of interventions and treatments to improve social abilities in adults with autism.

Social cognition as a predictor of functional and social skills in autistic adults without intellectual disability

“…Functional ability in this study was assessed using a test of independent‐living skills, some of which include relatively substantial social demands (e.g., rescheduling an appointment), and neurocognition may affect performance in part because of its influence on social cognitive abilities that facilitate successful task completion. Mediation occurred for both the social appraisal subdomain of social cognition, and for the serial pathway of social perception through social appraisal, supporting a hierarchically organized two factor conceptualization of social cognition in ASD [Morrison et al, ]. For social skills, social cognition did not mediate the relationship with neurocognition but rather directly accounted for a significant portion of variance beyond other demographic and cognitive factors.…”

“…Social cognition. Social cognitive tasks consisted of 11 measures clustering into two primary subdomains: social perception and social appraisal [Morrison et al, 2019]. The eight social cognitive tasks previously demonstrating strong psychometric properties were included in the current study [see Morrison et al, 2019 for details].…”

“…Social cognitive tasks consisted of 11 measures clustering into two primary subdomains: social perception and social appraisal [Morrison et al, 2019]. The eight social cognitive tasks previously demonstrating strong psychometric properties were included in the current study [see Morrison et al, 2019 for details]. Tasks in the social perception subdomain include three emotion recognition tasks: the Bell-Lysaker Emotion Recognition Task [Bryson, Bell, & Lysaker, 1997], the Penn Emotion Recognition Task [ER-40;Kohler et al, 2005], and the Emotional Biological Motion task [Kern et al, 2013]; one face perception task [Benton Facial Recognition Task;Benton, Sivan, deS Hamsher, & Varney, 1994; and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001], which psychometrically aligns with social perception subdomain rather than social appraisal [Morrison et al, 2019].…”

“…The eight social cognitive tasks previously demonstrating strong psychometric properties were included in the current study [see Morrison et al, 2019 for details]. Tasks in the social perception subdomain include three emotion recognition tasks: the Bell-Lysaker Emotion Recognition Task [Bryson, Bell, & Lysaker, 1997], the Penn Emotion Recognition Task [ER-40;Kohler et al, 2005], and the Emotional Biological Motion task [Kern et al, 2013]; one face perception task [Benton Facial Recognition Task;Benton, Sivan, deS Hamsher, & Varney, 1994; and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001], which psychometrically aligns with social perception subdomain rather than social appraisal [Morrison et al, 2019]. Tasks in the social appraisal subdomain include two mentalizing tasks, the Awareness of Social Inference Task, Part 3 [McDonald et al, 2006] and the Hinting Task [Corcoran, Mercer, & Frith, 1995], and the Relationships Across Domains task [RAD; Sergi et al, 2009], which measures conceptual understanding of complex relationship dynamics.…”

“…A variety of social skills programs have been developed for autistic adults, under the assumption that improving social understanding and ability will improve functional outcomes [Eack et al, 2013;Spain & Blainey, 2015]. Because autistic adults without intellectual disability often perform poorly on measures of social cognition [Morrison et al, 2019;Velikonja, Fett, & Velthorst, 2019], including in the areas of social attention [Pelphrey et al, 2002;Sasson et al, 2007], affect recognition [Eack, Mazefsky, & Minshew, 2015], and advanced theory of mind [Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, & Robertson, 1997], programs often focus on social cognition and explicitly teach strategies for improving performance Kandalaft, Didehbani, Krawczyk, Allen, & Chapman, 2013;Koegel, Ashbaugh, Navab, & Koegel, 2016;Turner-Brown, Perry, Dichter, Bodfish, & Penn, 2008]. Indeed, these programs often do improve performance on specific tasks [Bishop-Fitzpatrick, Minshew, & Eack, 2014;Kandalaft et al, 2013;Koegel et al, 2016], and confer other benefits like increasing knowledge about social skills [Gates, Kang, & Lerner, 2017] and facilitating friendship development when a peer group component is included [Spain & Blainey, 2015].…”