%0 Journal Article
%A Wu, H-C
%A Biondo, F
%A O'Mahony, C
%A White, S
%A Thiebaut, F
%A Rees, G
%A Burgess, PW
%D 2020
%F discovery:10106524
%I SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
%J Autism
%K autism, conversation, heterogeneity, mentalising, social interaction
%T Mentalising and conversation-following in autism
%U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10106524/
%X Some people with autism spectrum disorders have been observed to experience difficulties with making correct  inferences in conversations in social situations. However, the nature and origin of their problem is rarely investigated.  This study used manipulations of video stimuli to investigate two questions. The first question was whether it is the  number of people involved in social situations, that is, the source of problems in following conversations, or whether  it is the increased mentalising demands required to comprehend interactions between several people. The second  question asked was whether the nature and pattern of the errors that autism spectrum disorder participants show  are the same as typically developing people make when they make an error. In total, 43 typically developed adults and  30 adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder were studied. We found that it was the amount of mentalising  required, rather than the number of people involved, which caused problems for people with autism spectrum disorder  in following conversations. Furthermore, the autism spectrum disorder participants showed a more heterogeneous  pattern of errors, showing less agreement among themselves than the typically developed group as to which test items  were hardest. So, fully understanding the observed behaviour consequent upon weakness in mentalising ability in people  with autism spectrum disorders requires consideration of factors other than mentalising
%Z https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission