Attributing social meaning to ambiguous visual stimuli in secondary school students with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

This study investigated the social attribution ability of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the priming effect of social context passage on students’ social attribution ability. 30 adolescent students with ASD and 30 typically developing (TD) students participated in the research. Students were asked to read a priming passage, either with or without social context. Then they would complete the social attribution task, which was to depict a video with ambiguous stimuli moving and interacting. Social wordings of the three categories (Cognition, Affect, and Personification) that were used by the participants were counted and analysed. The ASD group used significantly less Cognition social wordings than the TD group during the narration. Contrary to prediction, ASD and TD groups did not differ in their use of Affect and Personification social wordings. Priming effect of social context passage was not found in both ASD and TD group.