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How Do Children Reason About Mirrors? A Comparison Between Adults, Typically Developed Children, and Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

ABSTRACT: The information about what one can see and what other people can see from different viewpoints is important. There are circumstances in which adults and children make systematic errors when predicting what is visible from their own or others’ viewpoints. This happens for example when reasoning about mirrors. We explored differences among three developmental groups: young adults (N=60) typically developing children (N=30); and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, N=30). We used an illustration of a top-down view of a room with a mirror on a wall (Room Observer and Mirror Perspective test: ROMP). Participants selected (circled on paper) which objects behind the observer in the room were visible, reflected from the mirror and from a given position (viewpoint). For half of each group, the observer in the room was described as a teddy bear; for the other half, it was described as a child. Overall, there were many errors in all groups, which we separate in errors of ignoring the viewpoint (same response to all three locations) and inversion errors (choosing objects on the left instead of the right or vice versa). In addition to the overall task difficulty, the ASD group made relatively more mistakes of ignoring the viewpoint compared to the other groups and underestimated how many objects were visible in the teddy bear condition that is when the viewpoint was an inanimate object. We suggest that this is related to a delay in theory of mind (ToM) development.

SUBMITTER: Soranzo A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8566430 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The relevance of affective information triggers cognitive prioritisation, dictated by both the attentional load of the relevant task, and socio-emotional abilities. This dataset provides electroencephalographic (EEG) signals related to implicit emotional speech perception under low, intermediate, and high attentional demands. Demographic and behavioural data are also provided. Specific social-emotional reciprocity and verbal communication characterise Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and may influence the processing of affective prosodies. Therefore, 62 children and their parents or legal guardians participated in data collection, including 31 children with high autistic traits (x̄age=9.6-year-old, σage=1.5) who previously received a diagnosis of ASD by a medical specialist, and 31 typically developed children (x̄age=10.2-year-old, σage=1.2). Assessments of the scope of autistic behaviours using the Autism Spectrum Rating Scales (ASRS, parent report) are provided for every child. During the experiment, children listened to task-irrelevant affective prosodies (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral and sadness) while answering three visual tasks: neutral image viewing (low attentional load), one-target 4-disc Multiple Object Tracking (MOT; intermediate), one-target 8-disc MOT (high). The EEG data recorded during all three tasks and the tracking capacity (behavioural data) from MOT conditions are included in the dataset. Particularly, the tracking capacity was computed as a standardised index of attentional abilities during MOT, corrected for guessing. Beforehand, children answered the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, and resting-state EEG activity of children was recorded for 2 minutes with eyes open. Those data are also provided. The present dataset can be used to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of implicit emotion and speech perceptions and their interaction with attentional load and autistic traits. Besides, resting-state EEG data may be used to characterise inter-individual heterogeneity at rest and, in turn, associate it with attentional capacities during MOT and with autistic behavioural patterns. Finally, tracking capacity may be useful to explore dynamic and selective attentional mechanisms under emotional constraints.

Dataset Information

How Do Children Reason About Mirrors? A Comparison Between Adults, Typically Developed Children, and Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

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