The University of Sydney, Australia.
VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Autism. 2015 Jul;19(5):604-12. doi: 10.1177/1362361314537911. Epub 2014 Jun 12.
Anticipating future interactions is characteristic of our everyday social experiences, yet has received limited empirical attention. Little is known about how children with autism spectrum disorder, known for their limitations in social interactive skills, engage in social anticipation. We asked children with autism spectrum disorder and their typically developing counterparts to consider an interaction with another person in the near future. Our results suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children performed similarly when anticipating the age, gender, and possible questions of another person, but children with autism spectrum disorder struggled more to anticipate what they would say in response to an anticipated interaction. Furthermore, such responses were robustly associated with imaginative capacities in typically developing children but not children with autism spectrum disorder. Our findings suggest that the cognitive mechanisms of social anticipation may differ between these groups.
预期未来的互动是我们日常社交经验的特征，但这方面的实证研究却很有限。对于自闭症谱系障碍儿童（以社交互动技能有限为特征）如何参与社会预期，我们知之甚少。我们要求自闭症谱系障碍儿童和他们的典型发展同龄人考虑不久后与另一个人的互动。我们的结果表明，自闭症谱系障碍儿童和典型发展儿童在预期另一个人的年龄、性别和可能的问题时表现相似，但自闭症谱系障碍儿童更难以预期他们对预期互动的反应。此外，这种反应与典型发展儿童的想象力能力密切相关，但与自闭症谱系障碍儿童无关。我们的发现表明，这两个群体的社会预期认知机制可能不同。
