Spontaneous theory of mind in autism: are anticipatory gaze and reaction time biases consistent?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit persistent deficits in social interaction and communication in adulthood. Pioneering studies have suggested that these difficulties arise from a lack of immediate, spontaneous mentalizing (i.e., theory of mind: ToM), specifically, an ability to attribute false beliefs to others, which should be usually acquired during neurotypical development. However, this view has been challenged by recent reports of nonreplications of spontaneous mentalizing, even in neurotypical adults.

Objectives

We aimed to evaluate (1) whether measurements of spontaneous ToM in two representative paradigms, gaze bias in the anticipatory looking (AL) test and reaction time bias in the object detection (OD) test, are correlated in neurot

SUBMITTER: Onda K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11663880 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature