Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Role of Theory of Mind on Social Information Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Mediation Analysis

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show significant impairments in social skills and theory of mind (ToM). The aim of this study was to evaluate ToM and social information processing abilities in 52 children with ASD compared to 55 typically developing (TD) children. A mediation analysis evaluated whether social information processing abilities can be mediated by ToM competences. In our results, children with autism showed a deficit in social skills and ToM components. The innovative results of our study applying mediation analysis demonstrate that ToM plays a key role in the development of social abilities, and the lack of ToM competences in children with autism impairs their competent social behavior.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ambridge, B., Bannard, C., & Jackson, G. H. (2015). Is grammar spared in autism spectrum disorder? Data from judgments of verb argument structure overgeneralization errors. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(10), 3288–3296. doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2487-5.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-V, 5th edn. Arlington,VA: American Psychiatric Publishing

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Astington, J.W. (1993).The child’s discovery of the mind. Cambridge: MA, Harvard University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Astington, J. W., & Jenkins, J. M. (1999). A longitudinal study of the relation between language and theory-of-mind development. Developmental Psychology, 3(5), 1311–1320.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Astington, J.W., & Edward, M.J. (2010). The Development of Theory of Mind in Early Childhood Janet Wilde. Encyclopedia on early childhoon development.

  • Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 51, 1173–1182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S. (1997). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. A Bradford Book from Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change, Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S., Bowen D. C., Holt, R. J., Allison, C., Auyeung, B., Lombardo M. V., et al. (2015). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test: Complete Absence of Typical Sex Difference in ~ 400 Men and Women with Autism. PLOS ONE, 10(8): e0136521.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S.; Leslie, A.M; & Frith, U. (1985). “Does the autistic child have a ‘theory of mind’?”. Cognition. 21 (1): 37–46. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Batson, C. D. (1987). Prosocial motivation: Is it ever truly altruistic? In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 20 (pp. 65–122). New York: Academic Press. 10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60412-8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bishop, D. (2003). The Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG-2)—Version 2. London, United Kingdom: The Psychological Corporation.

  • Blair, R. J. (1995). A cognitive developmental approach to morality: investigating the psychopath. Cognition, 57, 1–29.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, J., Cohen, P., West, S. G., & Aiken, L. S. (2003). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

  • Colle, L., Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., & Van der Lely, H. K. (2008). Narrative discourse in adults with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 3(1), 28–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cornish, K., Rinehart, N., Gray, K., & Howlin, P. (2010). Comic strip task. Melbourne: Monash University Developmental Neuroscience and Genetic Disorders Laboratory and Monash University Centre for Developmental Psychiatry and Psychology.

  • Crick, N. R., & Dodge, K. A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information: Processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 74–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenberg, N., & Miller, P. A. (1987). The relation of empathy to prosocial and related behaviors. Psychological Bulletin, 3(1), 91–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flavell, J.H., & Miller, P.H. (1998). Social cognition. In: D. Kuhn, R. Siegler, (eds), Cognition, perception and language. 5th ed. New York, NY: Wiley (pp. 851–898). W. Damon, (ed), Handbook of child psychology, vol. 2.

  • Fletcher-Watson, S., McConnell, F., Manola, E., & McConachie, H. (2014). Interventions based on the Theory of Mind cognitive model for autism Spectrum disorder(ASD). Cochrane Database System. Rev. 3: CD008785. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD008785.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franco, F., Itakura, S., Pomorska, K., Abramowski, A., Nikaido, K., & Dimitriou, D. (2014). Can children with autism read emotions from the eyes? The eyes test revisited. Research in Developmental Disabilities - Journal, 3(5), 1015–1026.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frith, U., & Frith, C. D. (2003). Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 29: 459–473.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frith, U., & Happé, F. (1994). Autism: beyond “theory of mind.” Cognition, 50: 115–132.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Happé, F. (1994). An advanced test of the or yof mind:understanding of story char- acters’thoughts and feelings by able autistics, mentally handicapped and normal children and adults. Journal Autism Developmental Disorders, 24: 129–154.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Happè, F., & Frith, U. (2014). Annual Research Review: Towards a developmental neuroscience of atypical social cognition. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 3(6), 553–577.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hayes, A. F., & Preacher, K. J. (2010). Quantifying and Testing Indirect Effects in Simple Mediation Models When the Constituent Paths Are Nonlinear. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 45, 627–660.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, M. L. (1984). Interaction of affect and cognition in empathy. In C. E. Izard, J. Kagan & R. B. Zajonc (Eds.), Emotions, cognitions, and behavior (pp. 103–131). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, A. P., Happé, F.G. E., Gilbert, F., Burnett, S., & Viding, E. (2010). Feeling, caring, knowing:different types of empathy deficit in boys with psychopathic tendencies and autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 11, 1188–1197.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kenny, D. A., Korchmaros, J. D., & Bolger, N. (2003). Lower level mediation in multilevel models. Psychological Methods, 8, 115–128.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Krebs, D.L., & Russell, C. (1981). Role-taking and altruism. Altruism and Helping Behavior. In J. P. Rushton & R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.). Erlbaum Associates, 137–165.

  • Lai, M.C., Lombardo, M.V., Baron-Cohen, S. (2014). Autism. The Lancet, 383(9920), 896–910.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lerner, M. D., Hutchins, T. L., & Prelock, P. A. (2011). Brief report: Preliminary evaluation of the theory of mind inventory and its relationship to measures of social skills. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41, 512–517.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Leslie, A. M. (1987). Pretense and Representation: The Origins of “Theory of Mind”. Psychological Review Copyright by the. American Psychological Association, Vol, 3(4), 412–426.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leslie, A. M. (1994). Pretending and believing: issues in the theory of ToM. Cognition, 50 (1–3), 211–238.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lord, C., Rutter, M., DiLavore, P.C., Risi, S., Gotham, K., & Bishop, S.L. (2012). Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2): Manual, 2ndEdn. Los Angeles: CA: Western Psychological Services.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mariano, M., Pino, M. C., Peretti, S., Valenti, M., & Mazza, M. (2016). Understanding criminal behaviour: Empathic impairment in criminal offenders. Social Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/17470919.2016.1179670.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mathieu, J. E., & Taylor, S. R. (2006). Clarifying conditions and decision points for mediational type inferences in organizational behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27, 1031–1056. doi:10.1002/job.406.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mazza, M., Pino, M.C., Mariano, M., Tempesta, D., Ferrara, M., De Berardis, D., et al. (2014). Affective and cognitive empathy in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 791.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Milligan, K., Astington, J. W., & Dack, L. A. (2007). Language and theory of mind: meta-analysis of the relation between language ability and false-belief understanding. Child Development, 78(2), 622–646.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pierce, G. (2003). Multiple regression and mediation analyses using SPSS. Psychology.

  • Pino, M. C., Tempesta, D., Catalucci, A., Anselmi, M., Nigri, A., Iaria, G., et al. (2016). Altered Cortico-Limbic Functional Connectivity During an Empathy Task in subjects with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Journal Psychopathological Behaviour Assessment, doi:10.1007/s10862-016-9538-x.

    Google Scholar 

  • Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 3(3), 879–891.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sebastian, C. L., Fontaine, N.M.G., Bird, G., Blakemore, S. J., De Brito, S. A., McCrory, E., J. P., et al. (2012). Neural processing associated with cognitive and affective Theory of Mind in adolescents and adults. SCAN, 7, 53–63.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Tomer, R., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2005). The Neuroanatomical basis of understanding sarcasm and its relationship to social cognition. Neuropsychology, 3(3), 288–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shamay-Tsoory, S.G., Aharon-Peretz, J., & Perry, D. (2009). Two systems for empathy: a double dissociation between emotional and cognitive empathy in inferior frontal gyrus versus ventromedial prefrontal lesions. Brain, 132, 617–627.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sivaratnam, C. S., Cornish, K., Gray, K. M., Howlin, P., & Rinehart, N. J. (2012). Brief report: Assessment of the social-emotional profile in children with autism spectrum disorders using a novel comic strip task. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 42, 2505–2512.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sobel, M. E. (1982). Aysmptotic confidence intervals for indirect effects in structural equation models. In S. Leinhardt (Ed.), Sociological Methodology (pp. 290–212). San Francisco: Jossey-Boss.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sobel, M. E. (1986). Some new results on indirect effects and their standard errors in covariance models. In N. Tuma (Ed.), Sociological Methodology (pp. 159–186). Washington D.C.: American Sociological.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suraniti, S., Ferri, R., & Neri, V. (2009). Test For Reception of Grammar- TROG-2. Curatori edizione italiana. Firenze: Giunti O. S.

  • Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. N. (2012). The neuroscience of empathy: progress, pitfalls and promise. Nature Neuroscience, 15, 675–680. doi:10.1038/nn.3085.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ziv, Y., Hadad, B.S., Khateeb, Y., & Terkel-Dawer, R. (2014). Social information processing in preschool children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Journal Autism Developmental Disorders 44(4 ), 846–859.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ziv, Y., & Sorongon, A. (2011). Social Information Processing in Preschool Children: Relations to Sociodemographic Risk and Problem Behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 3(4), 412–429.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author contribution

MoM and MV designed research; MCP, MeM, and SP collected data; FM analyzed the data; MoM, MCP, SP, and MeM wrote paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Clinical Sciences and Biotechnology, University of L’aquila, L’aquila, Italy

    Monica Mazza, Melania Mariano, Sara Peretti, Francesco Masedu, Maria Chiara Pino & Marco Valenti

  2. Reference Regional Centre for Autism, Abruzzo Region Health System, L’aquila, Italy

    Marco Valenti

Authors
  1. Monica Mazza
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Melania Mariano
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sara Peretti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Francesco Masedu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Maria Chiara Pino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Marco Valenti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Monica Mazza.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mazza, M., Mariano, M., Peretti, S. et al. The Role of Theory of Mind on Social Information Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Mediation Analysis. J Autism Dev Disord 47, 1369–1379 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3069-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3069-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation