Error monitoring in decision ‐making and timing is disrupted in autism spectrum disorder

This study constitutes a comprehensive exploration of decision‐making and interval timing in ASD as well as the first investigation of error‐monito ring abilities of individuals with ASD regarding their performance in the corresponding domains. We found that children with ASD fared similar to typically developing (TD) children in their first‐order task performance in two‐alternative forced choice perceptual decision‐making and temporal re production tasks as well as the secondary tasks (signal detection and free finger tapping tasks). Yet, they had a deficit in error‐monitoring in both tasks where their accuracy did not predict their confidence ratings, which was the case for the TD group. The difference between ASD and TD groups w as limited to error‐monitoring performance. This study attests to a circumscribed impairment in error‐monitoring in individuals with ASD, which may partially underlie their social interaction problems. This difficulty in cognitively evaluating one's own performance may also relate to theory of m ind deficits reported for individuals with ASD, where they struggle in understanding the mental states and intentions of others. This novel finding holds the potential to inform effective interventions for individuals with ASD that can target this error‐monitoring ability to have broad‐ranging e ffects in multiple domains involved in communication and social interaction.Autism Res2018. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, W...

Source: Autism Research - November 28, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Ceymi Doenyas, Tuba Mutluer, Egemen Gen ç, Fuat Balcı Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research