Theory of mind in naturalistic conversations between autistic and typically developing children and adolescents

Abstract

Successful social interactions are assumed to depend on theory of mind—the ability to represent others’ mental states—yet most studies of the relation between theory of mind and social-interactive success rely on non-interactive tasks that do not adequately capture the spontaneous engagement of theory of mind, a crucial component of everyday social interactions. We addressed this gap by establishing a novel observational rating scale to measure the spontaneous use of theory of mind (or lack thereof) within naturalistic conversations ( conversational ToM; cToM). In 50 age- and gender-matched dyads of autistic and typically developing youth aged 8–16 years (three dyad types: autistic–typically developing, typically developing–typically developing, autistic–autistic), we assessed cToM during 5-min unstructured conversations. We found that ratings on the cToM Negative scale, reflecting theory-of-mind-related violations of neurotypical conversational norms, were negatively associated with two forms of non-interactive theory of mind: visual-affective and spontaneous. In contrast, the cToM Positive scale, reflecting explicit mental state language and perspective-taking, was not associated with non-interactive theory of mind. Furthermore, autistic youth were rated higher than typically developing youth on cToM Negative, but the groups were rated similarly on cToM Positive. Together, these findings provide insight into multiple aspects of theory of mind in conversation and reveal a nuanced picture of the relative strengths and difficulties among autistic youth. Lay abstract Conversation is a key part of everyday social interactions. Previous studies have suggested that conversational skills are related to theory of mind, the ability to think about other people’s mental states, such as beliefs, knowledge, and emotions. Both theory of mind and conversation are common areas of difficulty for autistic people, yet few studies have investigated how people, including autistic people, use theory of mind during conversation. We developed a new way of measuring cToM using two rating scales: cToM Positive captures behaviors that show consideration of a conversation partner’s mental states, such as referring to their thoughts or feelings, whereas cToM Negative captures behaviors that show a lack of theory of mind through violations of neurotypical conversational norms, such as providing too much, too little, or irrelevant information. We measured cToM in 50 pairs of autistic and typically developing children (ages 8–16 years) during 5-min “getting to know you” conversations. Compared to typically developing children, autistic children displayed more frequent cToM Negative behaviors but very similar rates of cToM Positive behaviors. Across both groups, cToM Negative (but not Positive) ratings were related to difficulties in recognizing emotions from facial expressions and a lower tendency to talk about others’ mental states spontaneously (i.e., without being instructed to do so), which suggests that both abilities are important for theory of mind in conversation. Altogether, this study highlights both strengths and difficulties among autistic individuals, and it suggests possible avenues for further research and for improving conversational skills.

Partner similarity and social-cognitive traits predict social interaction success among strangers

“…In fact, no individual trait or task social cognitive measures reached a BF commensurate with moderate evidence against the null hypothesis. This is consistent with previous work which has not shown a positive association between theory of mind ability and self-or partnergenerated ratings of interaction quality (Alkire et al, 2022). It is likely that casual introductory social interactions do not require good mind-reading skills in order to be successful, especially if the success measure is subjective quality rather than task-based performance, which more overtly requires communicative understanding.…”

“…Empirical findings reveal modest links between social cognitive traits and outcomes such as relationship quality and maintenance (Gleason et al, 2009;Lecce et al, 2017;Nilsen & Bacso, 2017;Sened et al, 2017). However, there is a good deal of disconnect between examining socialcognitive ability through trait assessments or laboratory tasks and how social interactions unfold naturally (Alkire et al, 2022;Zaki et al, 2008). Dynamic interactions provide rich verbal and nonverbal information directly to the interaction partner, and in turn require reciprocal information from them.…”

Virtual Reality Training of Social Skills in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Examination of Acceptability, Usability, User Experience, Social Skills, and Executive Functions

“…It should be noted though that all aforementioned studies, despite their findings, did not use in vivo measures of social functioning or a naturalistic context of assessment. Social skills finally have been theoretically proposed to also depend on social cognition aspects such as mental state/emotion recognition [23] but these aspects are not consistently associated with social impairment in ASD [24]. Given these potential associations among social cognition and social skills, EF and social skills, and EF and social cognition (e.g., [25], [26]), it has been suggested that EF may contribute to social skills both directly and indirectly [27]; Social cognition aspects are likely to partially mediate the association between EF and social skills.…”

“…With regards to the mental state/emotion recognition ability, it was not found significantly related to performance in VR social scenarios but associated only with computing and gaming experience variables. Previous evidence suggests that individuals with ASD present difficulties in recognition of mental states/emotions (e.g., [104]- [106]), but there are limited and inconsistent findings regarding its association with social competence (e.g., [24]). Our results showed that in adults with ASD, plausibly, it is other cognitive functions (such as EF) that are implicated in the expression of social skills.…”

Virtual Reality Training of Social Skills in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Examination of Acceptability, Usability, User Experience, Social Skills, and Executive Functions.

“…It should be noted though that all aforementioned studies, despite their findings, did not use in vivo measures of social functioning or a naturalistic context of assessment. Social skills finally have been theoretically proposed to also depend on social cognition aspects such as mental state/emotion recognition [25] but as these aspects are not consistently associated with social impairment in ASD [26], the extent to which socio-cognitive abilities associate with the social difficulties in ASD has been debated over the years. Given these potential associations among social cognition and social skills, EF and social skills, and EF and social cognition (e.g., [27]- [29]), it has been suggested that EF may contribute to social skills both directly and indirectly [30].…”