Eisenkoeck, Antonia; Slavny-Cross, Rachel J. M. and Moore, James W.. 2022. Judging intentionality in the context of ambiguous actions among autistic adults. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 96, 101997. ISSN 1750-9467 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Background: Discerning intentional from unintentional actions is a key aspect of social cognition. Mental state attribution tasks show that autistic people are less accurate than neurotypicals in attributing an agent’s intention when there is clearly a right answer. Little is known about how autistic people judge the intentionality of ambiguous actions (i.e., actions that are neither clearly intentional nor clearly unintentional).

Aims: This study sought to find out whether autistic individuals differ in their interpretation of ambiguous action compared to neurotypical controls.

Methods and Procedures: 20 autistic and 20 neurotypical adults completed an ambiguous action and theory of mind task. Autistic traits, verbal reasoning and non-verbal perceptual reasoning ability were measured.

Outcomes and Results: Results show that intentionality endorsement scores for ambiguous but prototypically accidental actions were higher in autistic participants than controls. Theory of Mind (ToM) scores did not correlate with intentionality endorsement scores in either group therefore group differences could not be explained by ToM ability.

Conclusion and Implications: Autistic participants had a tendency to over-attribute intention compared to neurotypicals, which could not be explained by ToM ability. Studying ambiguous action is important with respect to ecological validity, given that we often face ambiguous actions during social encounters.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2022.101997
Additional Information:	The dataset generated and/or analysed during the current study have been made publicly available at OSF and can be accessed using the following link: https://www.osf.io/j2xem This work was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (RPG-2016-012).
Keywords:	Social cognition; theory of mind; intention attribution; intentionality bias
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event 28 May 2022 Accepted 13 June 2022 Published Online August 2022 Published
Item ID:	31901
Date Deposited:	14 Jun 2022 10:38
Last Modified:	13 Dec 2023 02:26
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/31901

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