False Belief Reasoning in Adults with and without Autistic Spectrum Disorder: Similarities and Differences

URN zum Zitieren dieses Dokuments: urn:nbn:de:bvb:355-epub-372967

Sommer, Monika, Döhnel, Katrin, Jarvers, Irina, Blaas, Lore, Singer, Manuela, Nöth, Victoria, Schuwerk, Tobias und Rupprecht, Rainer (2018) False Belief Reasoning in Adults with and without Autistic Spectrum Disorder: Similarities and Differences. Frontiers in Psychology 9 (183), S. 1-12.

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Andere URL zum Volltext: http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00183

Zusammenfassung

Zusammenfassung

A central diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the qualitative impairment in reciprocal social interaction and a prominent hypotheses that tried to explain this impairment is the Theory of Mind (ToM) deficit hypotheses. On a behavioral level the critical test for having a ToM, the understanding of false beliefs (FB), is often used for testing ToM abilities in individuals with ASD. Investigating the neural underpinnings several neuroimaging studies revealed a network of areas involved in FB reasoning in neurotypical individuals. For ASD individuals the neural correlates of false belief processing are largely unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and an adapted unexpected transfer task, that makes it possible to distinguish between the computation of diverging beliefs and the selection of a belief-associated response, we investigated a group of adult high-functioning individuals with ASD (N = 15) and an age and IQ matched group of neurotypical adults (NT; N = 15). On the behavioral level we found no group differences. On the neural level, results were two-fold: In the story phase, in which participants had to compute whether the character's belief is congruent or incongruent to their own belief, there were no differences between neurotypical participants and those diagnosed with ASD. But, in the subsequent question phase, participants with ASD showed increased activity in the bilateral anterior prefrontal cortex, the left posterior frontal cortex, the left superior temporal gyrus, and the left temporoparietal area. These results suggest that during the story phase in which the participants processed observable actions the neural correlates do not differ between adult individuals with ASD and NT individuals. But in the question phase in which participants had to infer an unobservable mental state results revealed neural differences between the two groups. Possibly, these subtle neural processing differences may contribute to the fact that adult ASD individuals are able to master explicit false belief tasks but fail to apply their strategies during everyday social interaction.

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Dokumentenart:

Artikel

Datum:

Februar 2018

Institutionen:

Medizin > Lehrstuhl für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie

Projekte:

Open Access Publizieren (DFG)

Identifikationsnummer:

Wert	Typ
10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00183	DOI

Stichwörter / Keywords:

autism spectrum disorder, adults, false belief reasoning, theory of mind, mentalizing

Dewey-Dezimal-Klassifikation:

600 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften > 610 Medizin

Status:

Veröffentlicht

Begutachtet:

Ja, diese Version wurde begutachtet

An der Universität Regensburg entstanden:

Eingebracht am:

09 Mai 2018 12:01

Zuletzt geändert:

01 Jun 2018 08:59

Dokumenten-ID:

37296

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