Skorich Daniel P, Gash Tahlia B, Stalker Katie L, Zheng Lidan, Haslam S Alexander
School of Psychology, University of Queensland, McElwain Building, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia.
Research School of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2017 May;47(5):1341-1353. doi: 10.1007/s10803-017-3049-9.
The social difficulties of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are typically explained as a disruption in the Shared Attention Mechanism (SAM) sub-component of the theory of mind (ToM) system. In the current paper, we explore the hypothesis that SAM's capacity to construct the self-other-object relations necessary for shared-attention arises from a self-categorization process, which is weaker among those with more autistic-like traits. We present participants with self-categorization and shared-attention tasks, and measure their autism-spectrum quotient (AQ). Results reveal a negative relationship between AQ and shared-attention, via self-categorization, suggesting a role for self-categorization in the disruption in SAM seen in ASD. Implications for intervention, and for a ToM model in which weak central coherence plays a role are discussed.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的社交困难通常被解释为心理理论（ToM）系统的共享注意机制（SAM）子成分受到干扰。在本文中，我们探讨了这样一种假设，即SAM构建共享注意所需的自我-他人-客体关系的能力源自自我分类过程，而在具有更多自闭症样特征的个体中，这种能力较弱。我们让参与者完成自我分类和共享注意任务，并测量他们的自闭症谱系商数（AQ）。结果显示，通过自我分类，AQ与共享注意之间存在负相关，这表明自我分类在ASD中所见的SAM干扰中发挥了作用。文中还讨论了对干预的影响，以及弱中央连贯性在其中起作用的ToM模型。
