Department of Psychology, Social Sciences University of Ankara, Ankara, Turkey.
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
Autism Res. 2021 May;14(5):911-920. doi: 10.1002/aur.2410. Epub 2020 Oct 16.
Impaired social cognition has been suggested to underlie the social communication difficulties that define autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In typical development, social cognition may deteriorate in older age, but age effects in ASD adults have been little explored. In the present study, we compared groups of younger and older adults with and without ASD (n = 97), who completed a set of social cognition tasks assessing theory of mind (ToM), and self-report measures of empathy and alexithymia. While typically developing (TD) younger adults outperformed elderly TD and younger ASD participants, younger and older ASD adults did not differ in their ToM performance, and the elderly ASD and TD groups performed equivalently. By contrast, ASD adults reported lower empathy scores and higher levels of alexithymia symptoms compared to TD adults regardless of age. The difference between ASD and TD groups in self-reported empathy scores was no longer significant when alexithymia was covaried (with the exception of the Perspective Taking subscore). Results suggest a possible age-protective effect on ToM in the ASD group. In addition, empathy difficulties appear to be associated with alexithymia rather than ASD per se. Possible interpretations are discussed, and future directions for autism aging research are proposed. LAY SUMMARY: People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties with social understanding. Some age-related studies in typical development have shown a decline in social understanding in older age. We investigated whether a similar pattern is present in adults with ASD. We found that understanding what someone is thinking was not worse in older versus younger autistic adults. Also, we reported further evidence suggesting that emotional empathy difficulties were related to difficulties with understanding one's own emotions rather than with autism itself. Autism Res 2021, 14: 911-920. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.
社会认知受损被认为是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）社交沟通困难的基础。在典型的发展过程中，社交认知能力可能会随着年龄的增长而下降，但 ASD 成年人的年龄效应却很少被探讨。在本研究中，我们比较了年龄较小和较大的 ASD 患者组和非 ASD 患者组（n=97），他们完成了一系列社会认知任务，评估心理理论（ToM），以及同理心和述情障碍的自我报告测量。虽然典型发展（TD）的年轻成年人比老年 TD 和年轻 ASD 参与者表现更好，但年轻和老年 ASD 成年人在 ToM 表现上没有差异，老年 ASD 和 TD 组的表现相当。相比之下，无论年龄如何，ASD 成年人报告的同理心得分较低，述情障碍症状水平较高。当考虑到述情障碍（除观点采择子量表外）时，ASD 组和 TD 组在自我报告的同理心得分上的差异不再显著。结果表明，ASD 组的 ToM 可能存在年龄保护效应。此外，同理心困难似乎与述情障碍有关，而不是与 ASD 本身有关。讨论了可能的解释，并提出了自闭症老龄化研究的未来方向。
