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Brief Report: Difficulty in Understanding Social Acting (But Not False Beliefs) Mediates the Link Between Autistic Traits and Ingroup Relationships

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Abstract

Why do individuals with more autistic traits experience social difficulties? Here we examined the hypothesis that these difficulties stem in part from a challenge in understanding social acting, the prosocial pretense that adults routinely produce to maintain positive relationships with their ingroup. In Study 1, we developed a self-administered test of social-acting understanding: participants read stories in which a character engaged in social acting and rated the appropriateness of the character’s response. Adults who scored 26 or higher on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) questionnaire gave significantly lower ratings than comparison participants (AQ < 26). Study 2 found that difficulty in understanding social acting, but not false beliefs, mediated the link between autistic traits and perceived ingroup relationships.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. To be clear, the first two systems (the psychological-reasoning and decoupling systems) are assumed to provide the mechanism for false-belief understanding, while their interactions with the last system (the ingroup-support system) provide the mechanism for social-acting understanding.

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Acknowledgments

The research reported in this manuscript was supported by a Hilibrand Autism Fellowship from the Yale Child Study Center to Daniel Yang, and by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to Renée Baillargeon (HD-21104).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Daniel Y.-J. Yang

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, USA

    Renée Baillargeon

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  1. Daniel Y.-J. Yang
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  2. Renée Baillargeon
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Correspondence to Daniel Y.-J. Yang.

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Yang, D.YJ., Baillargeon, R. Brief Report: Difficulty in Understanding Social Acting (But Not False Beliefs) Mediates the Link Between Autistic Traits and Ingroup Relationships. J Autism Dev Disord 43, 2199–2206 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1757-3

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