Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Sep;43(9):2199-206.
doi: 10.1007/s10803-013-1757-3.

Brief report: difficulty in understanding social acting (but not false beliefs) mediates the link between autistic traits and ingroup relationships

Daniel Y-J Yang  1 , Renée Baillargeon
Affiliations

Brief report: difficulty in understanding social acting (but not false beliefs) mediates the link between autistic traits and ingroup relationships

Daniel Y-J Yang et al. J Autism Dev Disord. 2013 Sep.

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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Results depicting the link between autistic traits and perceived ingroup relationships (top model), as mediated by social-acting understanding (bottom model). All analyses controlled for response positivity (by including participants’ ratings in the control stories as a covariate). Estimates are standardized regression coefficients. *p <.05, **p <.01
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Badenes LV, Estevan RAC, Bacete FJG. Theory of mind and peer rejection at school. Social Development. 2000;9:271–283.
    1. Baillargeon R, He Z, Setoh P, Scott R, Sloane S, Yang DY-J. False-belief understanding and why it matters: The social-acting hypothesis. To appear. In: Banaji MR, Gelman S, editors. Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us. New York: Oxford University Press; (in press-a)
    1. Baillargeon R, Scott RM, He Z, Sloane S, Setoh P, Jin K, Bian L. Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy. In: Shaver P, Mikulincer M, Borgida E, Bargh J, editors. APA handbook of personality and social psychology: Vol.1. Attitudes and social cognition. Washington, DC: APA; (in press-b)
    1. Banerjee R, Watling D, Caputi M. Peer relations and the understanding of faux pas: Longitudinal evidence for bidirectional associations. Child Development. 2011;82(6):1887–1905. - PubMed
    1. Baron-Cohen S, O’Riordan M, Stone V, Jones R, Plaisted K. Recognition of faux pas by normally developing children and children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 1999;29:407–418. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources