Impaired theory of mind for moral judgment in high-functioning autism
- 31 January 2011
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 108 (7), 2688-2692
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011734108
Abstract
High-functioning autism (ASD) is characterized by real-life difficulties in social interaction; however, these individuals often succeed on laboratory tests that require an understanding of another person's beliefs and intentions. This paradox suggests a theory of mind (ToM) deficit in adults with ASD that has yet to be demonstrated in an experimental task eliciting ToM judgments. We tested whether ASD adults would show atypical moral judgments when they need to consider both the intentions (based on ToM) and outcomes of a person's actions. In experiment 1, ASD and neurotypical (NT) participants performed a ToM task designed to test false belief understanding. In experiment 2, the same ASD participants and a new group of NT participants judged the moral permissibility of actions, in a 2 (intention: neutral/negative) × 2 (outcome: neutral/negative) design. Though there was no difference between groups on the false belief task, there was a selective difference in the moral judgment task for judgments of accidental harms, but not neutral acts, attempted harms, or intentional harms. Unlike the NT group, which judged accidental harms less morally wrong than attempted harms, the ASD group did not reliably judge accidental and attempted harms as morally different. In judging accidental harms, ASD participants appeared to show an underreliance on information about a person's innocent intention and, as a direct result, an overreliance on the action's negative outcome. These findings reveal impairments in integrating mental state information (e.g., beliefs, intentions) for moral judgment.This publication has 28 references indexed in Scilit:
- Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgmentsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010
- Damage to Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Judgment of Harmful IntentNeuron, 2010
- Mindblind Eyes: An Absence of Spontaneous Theory of Mind in Asperger SyndromeScience, 2009
- Atypical frontal-posterior synchronization of Theory of Mind regions in autism during mental state attributionSocial Neuroscience, 2009
- The neural basis of belief encoding and integration in moral judgmentNeuroImage, 2008
- Selective deficit in personal moral judgment following damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortexSocial Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2007
- The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgmentProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgementsNature, 2007
- Assignment of Moral Responsibility and PunishmentChild Development, 1986
- Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind” ?Cognition, 1985