The Role of Theory of Mind on Social Information Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Mediation Analysis

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Volumn 47, Issue 5, 2017, Pages 1369-1379

  Mazza, Monica ^a   Mariano, Melania ^a   Peretti, Sara ^a   Masedu, Francesco ^a   Pino, Maria Chiara ^a   Valenti, Marco ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF L'AQUILA   (Italy)

^b Reference Regional Centre for Autism   (Italy)

Author keywords

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD); Mediation analysis; Social cognition; Social information processing; Theory of mind (ToM)

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; AUTISM; CHILD; CONTROLLED STUDY; FEMALE; HIGH SCHOOL; HOSPITAL PATIENT; HUMAN; INFORMATION PROCESSING; MAJOR CLINICAL STUDY; MALE; OUTCOME ASSESSMENT; PRIMARY SCHOOL; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SOCIAL ADAPTATION; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL COGNITION; THEORY OF MIND; ADOLESCENT; CASE CONTROL STUDY; COGNITION; PRESCHOOL CHILD; PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIAL COMPETENCE;

ADOLESCENT; AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER; CASE-CONTROL STUDIES; CHILD; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; COGNITION; FEMALE; HUMANS; MALE; SOCIAL SKILLS; THEORY OF MIND;

EID: 85013105473     PISSN: 01623257     EISSN: 15733432     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-017-3069-5     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Ambridge, B., Bannard, C., & Jackson, G. H. (2015). Is grammar spared in autism spectrum disorder? Data from judgments of verb argument structure overgeneralization errors. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(10), 3288–3296. doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2487-5.
2. American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-V, 5th edn. Arlington,VA: American Psychiatric Publishing
3. Astington, J.W. (1993).The child’s discovery of the mind. Cambridge: MA, Harvard University Press
4. Astington, J. W., & Jenkins, J. M. (1999). A longitudinal study of the relation between language and theory-of-mind development. Developmental Psychology, 3(5), 1311–1320.
5. Astington, J.W., & Edward, M.J. (2010). The Development of Theory of Mind in Early Childhood Janet Wilde. Encyclopedia on early childhoon development.
6. Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 51, 1173–1182.
7. Baron-Cohen, S. (1997). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. A Bradford Book from Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change, Cambridge: MIT Press.
8. Baron-Cohen, S., Bowen D. C., Holt, R. J., Allison, C., Auyeung, B., Lombardo M. V., et al. (2015). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test: Complete Absence of Typical Sex Difference in ~ 400 Men and Women with Autism. PLOS ONE, 10(8): e0136521.
9. Baron-Cohen, S.; Leslie, A.M; & Frith, U. (1985). “Does the autistic child have a ‘theory of mind’?”. Cognition. 21 (1): 37–46. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8.
10. Batson, C. D. (1987). Prosocial motivation: Is it ever truly altruistic? In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 20 (pp. 65–122). New York: Academic Press. 10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60412-8.
11. Bishop, D. (2003). The Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG-2)—Version 2. London, United Kingdom: The Psychological Corporation.
12. Blair, R. J. (1995). A cognitive developmental approach to morality: investigating the psychopath. Cognition, 57, 1–29.
13. Cohen, J., Cohen, P., West, S. G., & Aiken, L. S. (2003). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
14. Colle, L., Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., & Van der Lely, H. K. (2008). Narrative discourse in adults with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 3(1), 28–40.
15. Cornish, K., Rinehart, N., Gray, K., & Howlin, P. (2010). Comic strip task. Melbourne: Monash University Developmental Neuroscience and Genetic Disorders Laboratory and Monash University Centre for Developmental Psychiatry and Psychology.
16. Crick, N. R., & Dodge, K. A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information: Processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 74–101.
17. Eisenberg, N., & Miller, P. A. (1987). The relation of empathy to prosocial and related behaviors. Psychological Bulletin, 3(1), 91–119.
18. Flavell, J.H., & Miller, P.H. (1998). Social cognition. In: D. Kuhn, R. Siegler, (eds), Cognition, perception and language. 5th ed. New York, NY: Wiley (pp. 851–898). W. Damon, (ed), Handbook of child psychology, vol. 2.
19. Fletcher-Watson, S., McConnell, F., Manola, E., & McConachie, H. (2014). Interventions based on the Theory of Mind cognitive model for autism Spectrum disorder(ASD). Cochrane Database System. Rev. 3: CD008785. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD008785.
20. Franco, F., Itakura, S., Pomorska, K., Abramowski, A., Nikaido, K., & Dimitriou, D. (2014). Can children with autism read emotions from the eyes? The eyes test revisited. Research in Developmental Disabilities - Journal, 3(5), 1015–1026.
21. Frith, U., & Frith, C. D. (2003). Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 29: 459–473.
22. Frith, U., & Happé, F. (1994). Autism: beyond “theory of mind.” Cognition, 50: 115–132.
23. Happé, F. (1994). An advanced test of the or yof mind:understanding of story char- acters’thoughts and feelings by able autistics, mentally handicapped and normal children and adults. Journal Autism Developmental Disorders, 24: 129–154.
24. Happè, F., & Frith, U. (2014). Annual Research Review: Towards a developmental neuroscience of atypical social cognition. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 3(6), 553–577.
25. Hayes, A. F., & Preacher, K. J. (2010). Quantifying and Testing Indirect Effects in Simple Mediation Models When the Constituent Paths Are Nonlinear. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 45, 627–660.
26. Hoffman, M. L. (1984). Interaction of affect and cognition in empathy. In C. E. Izard, J. Kagan & R. B. Zajonc (Eds.), Emotions, cognitions, and behavior (pp. 103–131). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
27. Jones, A. P., Happé, F.G. E., Gilbert, F., Burnett, S., & Viding, E. (2010). Feeling, caring, knowing:different types of empathy deficit in boys with psychopathic tendencies and autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 11, 1188–1197.
28. Kenny, D. A., Korchmaros, J. D., & Bolger, N. (2003). Lower level mediation in multilevel models. Psychological Methods, 8, 115–128.
29. Krebs, D.L., & Russell, C. (1981). Role-taking and altruism. Altruism and Helping Behavior. In J. P. Rushton & R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.). Erlbaum Associates, 137–165.
30. Lai, M.C., Lombardo, M.V., Baron-Cohen, S. (2014). Autism. The Lancet, 383(9920), 896–910.
31. Lerner, M. D., Hutchins, T. L., & Prelock, P. A. (2011). Brief report: Preliminary evaluation of the theory of mind inventory and its relationship to measures of social skills. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41, 512–517.
32. Leslie, A. M. (1987). Pretense and Representation: The Origins of “Theory of Mind”. Psychological Review Copyright by the. American Psychological Association, Vol, 3(4), 412–426.
33. Leslie, A. M. (1994). Pretending and believing: issues in the theory of ToM. Cognition, 50 (1–3), 211–238.
34. Lord, C., Rutter, M., DiLavore, P.C., Risi, S., Gotham, K., & Bishop, S.L. (2012). Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2): Manual, 2ndEdn. Los Angeles: CA: Western Psychological Services.
35. Mariano, M., Pino, M. C., Peretti, S., Valenti, M., & Mazza, M. (2016). Understanding criminal behaviour: Empathic impairment in criminal offenders. Social Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/17470919.2016.1179670.
36. Mathieu, J. E., & Taylor, S. R. (2006). Clarifying conditions and decision points for mediational type inferences in organizational behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27, 1031–1056. doi:10.1002/job.406.
37. Mazza, M., Pino, M.C., Mariano, M., Tempesta, D., Ferrara, M., De Berardis, D., et al. (2014). Affective and cognitive empathy in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 791.
38. Milligan, K., Astington, J. W., & Dack, L. A. (2007). Language and theory of mind: meta-analysis of the relation between language ability and false-belief understanding. Child Development, 78(2), 622–646.
39. Pierce, G. (2003). Multiple regression and mediation analyses using SPSS. Psychology.
40. Pino, M. C., Tempesta, D., Catalucci, A., Anselmi, M., Nigri, A., Iaria, G., et al. (2016). Altered Cortico-Limbic Functional Connectivity During an Empathy Task in subjects with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Journal Psychopathological Behaviour Assessment, doi:10.1007/s10862-016-9538-x.
41. Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 3(3), 879–891.
42. Sebastian, C. L., Fontaine, N.M.G., Bird, G., Blakemore, S. J., De Brito, S. A., McCrory, E., et al. (2012). Neural processing associated with cognitive and affective Theory of Mind in adolescents and adults. SCAN, 7, 53–63.
43. Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Tomer, R., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2005). The Neuroanatomical basis of understanding sarcasm and its relationship to social cognition. Neuropsychology, 3(3), 288–300.
44. Shamay-Tsoory, S.G., Aharon-Peretz, J., & Perry, D. (2009). Two systems for empathy: a double dissociation between emotional and cognitive empathy in inferior frontal gyrus versus ventromedial prefrontal lesions. Brain, 132, 617–627.
45. Sivaratnam, C. S., Cornish, K., Gray, K. M., Howlin, P., & Rinehart, N. J. (2012). Brief report: Assessment of the social-emotional profile in children with autism spectrum disorders using a novel comic strip task. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 42, 2505–2512.
46. Sobel, M. E. (1982). Aysmptotic confidence intervals for indirect effects in structural equation models. In S. Leinhardt (Ed.), Sociological Methodology (pp. 290–212). San Francisco: Jossey-Boss.
47. Sobel, M. E. (1986). Some new results on indirect effects and their standard errors in covariance models. In N. Tuma (Ed.), Sociological Methodology (pp. 159–186). Washington D.C.: American Sociological.
48. Suraniti, S., Ferri, R., & Neri, V. (2009). Test For Reception of Grammar- TROG-2. Curatori edizione italiana. Firenze: Giunti O. S.
49. Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. N. (2012). The neuroscience of empathy: progress, pitfalls and promise. Nature Neuroscience, 15, 675–680. doi:10.1038/nn.3085.
50. Ziv, Y., Hadad, B.S., Khateeb, Y., & Terkel-Dawer, R. (2014). Social information processing in preschool children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Journal Autism Developmental Disorders 44(4), 846–859.
51. Ziv, Y., & Sorongon, A. (2011). Social Information Processing in Preschool Children: Relations to Sociodemographic Risk and Problem Behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 3(4), 412–429.