Atypical development of spontaneous social cognition in autism spectrum disorders
Abstract
Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have profound impairment in the development of social interaction and communication. However, it is also known that some 'high-functioning' individuals with ASD show apparently typical capacity to process social information in a controlled experimental settings, despite their difficulties in daily life. The current paper overviews the spontaneous social cognition, spontaneous processing of social information in the absence of explicit instruction or task demand, in individuals with ASD. Three areas of the researches, false belief attribution, imitation/mimicry, and eye gaze processing, have been reviewed. The literatures suggest that high-functioning individuals with ASD (a) do not spontaneously attribute false belief to others, even though they can easily do so when explicitly instructed, (b) can imitate others' goal-directed actions under explicit instruction and show spontaneous mimicry of others' actions when they attend to the action, but are less likely to show spontaneous mimicry without the task structure to navigate attention to others' action and (c) can process others' gaze direction and shift attention to others' gaze directions, but fail to spontaneously attend to another person's eyes in social and communicative context, and less likely to be prompted to respond in response to perceived eye contact. These results are consistent with the claim that individuals with ASD do not spontaneously attend to socially releva…
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One symptom reported by individuals with ASD are difficulties in intuitively empathizing with others' emotional states, especially in situations that require an integration of complex social information.
“One symptom reported by individuals with ASD are difficulties in intuitively empathizing with others’ emotional states, especially in situations that require an integration of complex social information3,4.”
From Randomized clinical trial shows no substantial modulation of empathy-related neural activation by intranasal oxytocin in autism (2021) · cites this paper as [4]
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- Authors
- Senju, A.
- Affiliations
- Birkbeck, University of London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Senju, Atsushi
- ORCID
- Senju, Atsushi
- Venue
- Brain and Development
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-02
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 96-101
- ISSN
- 0387-7604 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2054253481
- Cited by
- 149
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 6
- FWCI
- 0.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Brain and Development (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- BIROn (Birkbeck, University of London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, high-functioning autism, false belief attribution, theory of mind, imitation, mimicry, gaze following, attentional shift, social attention, social communication
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Child, Child Development, Child Development Disorders, Pervasive, Child, Preschool, Cognition, Communication, Fixation, Ocular, Humans, Infant, Interpersonal Relations, Social Perception
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