Oakley Beth F M, Brewer Rebecca, Bird Geoffrey, Catmur Caroline
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge.
Medical Research Council Social, Genetic, & Developmental Psychiatry Centre.
J Abnorm Psychol. 2016 Aug;125(6):818-823. doi: 10.1037/abn0000182.
The ability to represent mental states (theory of mind [ToM]) is crucial in understanding individual differences in social ability and social impairments evident in conditions such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is a popular measure of ToM ability, validated in part by the poor performance of those with ASD. However, the RMET requires recognition of facial emotion, which is impaired in those with alexithymia, which frequently co-occurs with ASD. Thus, it is unclear whether the RMET indexes emotion recognition, associated with alexithymia, or ToM, associated with ASD. We therefore investigated the independent contributions of ASD and alexithymia to performance on the RMET. ASD and alexithymia-matched control participants did not differ on RMET performance, whereas ASD participants demonstrated impaired performance on an alternative test of ToM, the Movie for Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC). Furthermore, alexithymia, but not ASD diagnosis, significantly influenced RMET performance but did not affect MASC performance. These results suggest that the RMET measures emotion recognition rather than ToM ability and support the alexithymia hypothesis of emotion-related deficits in ASD. (PsycINFO Database Record
表征心理状态的能力（心理理论[ToM]）对于理解社会能力方面的个体差异以及诸如自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）等病症中明显的社会障碍至关重要。“从眼睛中读懂心思”测试（RMET）是一种常用的心理理论能力测量方法，部分通过自闭症谱系障碍患者表现不佳得到验证。然而，RMET需要对面部情绪进行识别，而述情障碍患者在这方面存在缺陷，述情障碍常与自闭症谱系障碍同时出现。因此，尚不清楚RMET所测量的是与述情障碍相关的情绪识别，还是与自闭症谱系障碍相关的心理理论。我们因此研究了自闭症谱系障碍和述情障碍对RMET表现的独立影响。自闭症谱系障碍组和述情障碍匹配的对照组在RMET表现上没有差异，而自闭症谱系障碍组在另一种心理理论测试——社会认知评估电影（MASC）中表现受损。此外，述情障碍而非自闭症谱系障碍诊断显著影响了RMET表现，但不影响MASC表现。这些结果表明，RMET测量的是情绪识别而非心理理论能力，并支持了自闭症谱系障碍中与情绪相关缺陷的述情障碍假说。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
