中国科学院行为科学重点实验室知识库

Background: Understanding and predicting others' behavior in a dynamic and rapidly changing world is a fundamental aspect of social interactions. However, it remains unclear as to whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) could understand and predict goal-directed social actions.Aims: To investigate the understanding of give-and-take interactions in children with ASD with the use of eye tracking.Methods and procedures: Experiment 1 and 2 investigated the understanding of giving and taking respectively in 5-to 8-year-old Chinese children with ASD and typically developing children by using the eye-tracking technology.Outcomes and Results: We found that children with ASD could predict actions, but they were less proficient in processing give-and-take interactions. Moreover, children with ASD showed impaired understanding of giving but not taking.Conclusions: These results indicate that the basic mechanisms of action prediction are intact in children with ASD whereas there may be deficits in the top-down social processing of the giving gesture.