Impairments in aspects of social cognition have been found in children who have experienced maltreatment; however, the long-term impact of childhood maltreatment on social cognition is less well understood. This study examined areas of social cognition that may be associated with poor psychological, social, and emotional outcomes in adults who have experienced intra-familial childhood maltreatment. In a sample of university students (N = 68), childhood maltreatment was associated with social cognitive impairment in two models of emotional intelligence (EI), trait EI and ability EI, and advanced theory of mind (ToM). Higher frequency and severity of specific subtypes of childhood maltreatment predicted lower trait EI, ability EI, and ToM. In particular, neglect predicted lower ToM and ability EI scores. Psychological abuse alone predicted lower trait EI while physical abuse was not a significant predictor for any of the social-cognitive variables. Further, the data showed maternal vs. paternal maltreatment predicted specific social cognitive outcomes. Understanding the relationship between social cognitive deficits and intra-familial maltreatment may guide clinical and community assessment and treatment approaches, as well as provide information on the pervasive and continuing impact of childhood maltreatment. / February 2017

Communiquer efficacement nécessite de produire une multitude d’inférences pragmatiques. Celles-ci reposent sur la capacité à prendre en compte un grand nombre d’indices, tels que le contexte ou l’état mental et physique du locuteur. Dans le cas du langage oral, l’interlocuteur s’appuie également sur les indices prosodiques. Ainsi, une prosodie enthousiaste associée à l’énoncé « Excellent. » aidera un interlocuteur à inférer que le locuteur est content tandis qu’une intonation plate le conduira au contraire à penser qu’il était ironique. Ces situations peuvent être particulièrement délicates pour les patients atteints d’un Trouble du Spectre Autistique (TSA) qui éprouvent des difficultés pour reconnaître et interpréter les états mentaux d’autrui. Nous prédisons donc que l’interprétation des indices prosodiques est délicate dans les TSA. Cependant, tous les aspects de l’interprétation prosodique ne requièrent pas d’attribuer des états mentaux. Par exemple, la distinction entre « PREsent » et « preSENT » (en anglais) est basée sur une simple connaissance du lexique, indépendante des pensées du locuteur. Dans ce travail, j’explore différents aspects de la prosodie afin de déterminer si les personnes avec un TSA sont spécifiquement atteintes dans leur capacité à comprendre les signaux prosodiques reposant sur la compréhension des intentions du locuteur. Je présente une série de travaux traitant de la prosodie grammaticale (Article 1), de la transmission accidentelle d’informations (Article 2), de l’accent contrastif (Articles 3 et 4), et de l’identification des états mentaux du locuteur (Article 5). Les résultats présentés dans ces travaux me conduisent ensuite à discuter des questions plus générales concernant la Théorie de l’Esprit (Article 6) et à proposer une explication alternative des déficits sociaux observés dans les TSA (Article 7). / Efficient communication requires a great deal of pragmatic inferencing. This is rooted in the ability to take into account a variety of cues, such as the context and the speaker’s mental or emotional states. Crucially, in spoken language, hearers can also rely on prosodic cues. For instance, if someone utters “That was brilliant”, using an enthusiastic prosody, this will help the hearer to decipher that the speaker is happy. In contrast, if the speaker’s comment is uttered in a deadpan tone of voice, she will be thought to be ironical. These situations can be especially challenging for people with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Indeed, these individuals have well-known difficulties in recognising and interpreting others’ mental states. This leads to the prediction that interpreting prosodic cues should be problematic in ASDs. However, not all aspects of prosodic interpretation involve mental states attribution. For instance, differentiating “PREsent” from “preSENT” merely requires one to be aware of the fact that these words stand for different things, without needing to attribute any particular thoughts to the speaker. In this work, I explore the various components of prosody and assess whether people with an ASD are specifically impaired in interpreting prosodic cues that rely on the understanding of the speaker’s intentions. I present a series of papers focusing on grammatical prosody (Paper 1), accidental information transmission (Paper 2), contrastive stress (Papers 3 and 4), and identification of the speaker’s attitude and emotional state (Paper 5). The results presented in these papers then lead me to address more general questions concerning Theory of Mind (Paper 6) and to discuss the possible origins of the social impairments found in ASDs (Paper 7).

Research has shown that theory of mind tends to develop in typically-developing children at about the age of 4 years. However, language appears to play a great role in this, particularly as deaf children, particularly those born to hearing parents, display extreme delays in theory of mind development, while bilinguals have been found to develop at a somewhat faster rate than monolinguals. Additionally, effects of culture on theory of mind development remain somewhat unclear, as there have been mixed results in past research. Theory of mind has also been correlated with metalinguistic ability and executive functioning skills, leading to multiple hypotheses regarding what drives theory of mind development. The aim of this doctoral thesis was to examine the relationships between theory of mind, metalinguistic awareness, and executive functioning, as well as to evaluate how language and culture play a role in these relationships. Four studies were conducted in an attempt to seek answers to six research questions surrounding this aim. Study1 evaluated theory of mind, metalinguistic awareness, and executive functioning among hearing nursery children in Central Scotland. Study 2 was aimed at evaluating these same skills among deaf children in the U.S. and U.K., as well as developing a scaling of theory of mind abilities among deaf children. Study 3 assessed these skills among deaf Ghanaian children, as well as evaluating theory of mind abilities among a group of hearing Ghanaian children. Finally, Study 4 compared monolingual and bilingual children on theory of mind, metalinguistic awareness, and executive functioning. Results show that there is a strong link between theory of mind and metalinguistic awareness among hearing children that is not explained by executive functioning skills. This relationship was not apparent among deaf children, who struggle more with theory of mind than metalinguistic awareness. The deaf children in Ghana were delayed compared to their Western peers; hearing Ghanaian children were delayed compared to their Western peers as well, but only slightly. Bilingual children and monolingual children performed similarly on false belief and set-shifting tasks; however, monolingual children outperformed bilinguals on metalinguistic awareness and inhibition tasks, possibly due to low verbal mental age among the monolinguals. Results of the four studies suggest that language does play a part in the relationship between theory of mind and metalinguistic awareness. Due to limited data, cultural effects remain unclear. It is proposed that deaf children’s struggle with theory of mind stems from their difficulty with abstract concepts.

Les recherches récentes ont cherché à appréhender la contribution de la théorie de l'esprit – appréhension du monde mental en termes d'états mentaux – au développement de la métacognition – connaissances sur le fonctionnement cognitif. C'est dans ce contexte que nous avons réalisé une étude longitudinale auprès d'enfants français scolarisés et âgés de 4 ans au premier temps. Les enfants (N=31) ont été rencontrés tous les 4 mois pendant deux années scolaires – moyenne et grande section de maternelle. L'objectif de notre étude était d'appréhender le développement de la métamémoire déclarative au cours de la période préscolaire, mais également celui de trois de ces précurseurs cognitifs – théorie de l'esprit, langage et mémoire épisodique. Les analyses de régression linéaire multiple nous ont permis d'appréhender les liens développementaux entre ces compétences, mais également de déterminer la contribution de chacun de ces trois précurseurs au développement de la métamémoire déclarative. Les résultats soulignent l'importance de distinguer soi/autrui dans l'évaluation des compétences et confirment que la théorie de l'esprit a un impact dans le développement de la métamémoire, principalement pour la compréhension de l'influence du nombre sur la mémorisation. / Until recently, two different kinds of research have been separately conducted on knowledge about mental world: those on metacognition that have studied knowledge about cognition and research on theory-of-mind, which refers to knowledge about mental states. A novel perspective of research tends to study the link between metacognition and theory-of-mind developments. The assumption is that theory-of-mind is a cognitive tool for understanding the cognitive functioning – i.e. metacognition. In this framework, we conducted a longitudinal study to investigate the developmental relationships between a special kind of metacognition – metamemory which is knowledge about memory functioning – and theory-of-mind, and the contribution of some cognitive precursors on declarative metamemory – language and episodic memory. Thirty-one children were recruited and evaluated on these four competencies every four months during two school years. Multiple regression analyses conducted on metamemory scores confirmed that theory-of-mind competences play a role in the declarative metamemory emergence.

Introduction It is widely reported that people with schizophrenia have social cognition deficits. In addition to their negative impact on functioning and quality of life, these deficits may also contribute to the use of violence. It has recently been established that social cognitive interventions (SCIs) can ameliorate deficits in facial affect recognition (FAR). This project aimed to systematically review whether SCIs can also improve theory of mind (ToM) abilities in people with schizophrenia. The empirical study aimed to explore whether the extent of the deficits in FAR and ToM in people with schizophrenia differed between those with and without a substantial history of violence. Method A systematic review was undertaken to identify studies where SCIs were provided to adults with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Key findings were highlighted with the quality of the studies’ methodology and reporting assessed. A quantitative research study was also undertaken involving 22 men aged 18-64 with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, comparing those with and without a substantial history of violence (SHV) on measures of FAR and ToM. Results The majority of the 13 studies included in the systematic review found that the provision of SCIs led to significant improvements in ToM. However, all studies demonstrated a potential for bias and were limited by inadequate sample size. In the empirical study, less than half of participants scored within the normal range for overall FAR ability, with no difference identified between the SHV and no-SHV group. However, the SHV group were poorer at recognising sadness and showed a tendency to perform better at the detection of faux pas, compared to the no-SHV group. Conclusions The systematic review identified that a wide range of SCIs can improve ToM abilities in people with schizophrenia. Its findings highlight that stringent, adequately powered studies should be undertaken, utilising standardised assessments of a range of levels of ToM ability, to enable identification of the most effective intervention. The findings of the empirical study are limited by a small and imbalanced sample size between groups and so must be interpreted with caution. However, patterns observed in the results highlight areas for further exploration. The strengths of this study’s design and recruitment challenges are discussed.

The current study examined whether a sample of detained male adolescents (n = 107; Mean age = 15.50; SD = 1.30) could be disaggregated into two distinct groups, consistent with past research on primary and secondary variants of callous-unemotional (CU) traits in adolescents. This study also sought to determine a possible explanation for the CU traits among youth in the secondary variant by examining whether they differ from primary variants on measures of cognitive and affective empathy. Using Latent Profile Analyses, two groups of adolescents high on CU traits were identified, a large group (n = 30) high on CU traits but low on anxiety (primary) and a smaller group high on both CU traits and anxiety (n = 10; secondary). Using self-report and computerized measures of affective (e.g., emotional reactivity) and cognitive empathy (e.g., affective facial recognition and theory of mind (ToM)), results revealed that the secondary variant demonstrated the lowest levels of cognitive empathy. In contrast, the primary variant demonstrated the lowest levels of self-report affective empathy, but these levels were not significantly different from the secondary variant. Multiple regression analyses testing the association among measures of empathy, CU traits, and anxiety produced a mostly consistent pattern of results. One exception was the finding of an interaction between CU traits and anxiety in the prediction of fear recognition accuracy that indicated that CU traits were positively associated with accuracy in recognizing fearful facial expressions when anxiety was low. The current study builds upon previous work examining primary and secondary variants of CU traits by suggesting that both primary and secondary variants may exhibit similar deficits in affective empathy, but that secondary variants may also exhibit deficits in cognitive empathy and perspective-taking that are not present in primary variants.

The aim of the current study was to bring greater clarity to our understanding of the relation between theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF), specifically working memory (WM) and inhibitory control (IC), during typical adolescent development and of the specific nature of impairments in ToM and EF in the cognitive profile of individuals with Asperger's Syndrome and High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA). In total, 80 participants, half typically developing (TD) and half with AS/HFA, participated in the study. TD participants were matched to the participants with AS/HFA on chronological age and gender. Participants were tested across two test sessions, approximately one year apart. For Session 1, the TD participants ranged in age from 10.1 to 17.9 years (M = 14.68, SD = 2.05), and the participants with AS/HFA ranged in age from 10.2 to 17.9 years (M = 14.64, SD = 2.19). I tested the participants on a ToM battery, consisting of an emotional perspective taking measure, the Mind in the Eyes Test, and two cognitive perspective taking measures, the Advanced ToM Vignettes, designed by the researcher, and Happé's Strange Stories. In addition, an EF battery was administered, containing a Reading Span Task, Change Detection Task, and Flanker Task, which assessed verbal WM, visual WM, and IC, respectively. Firstly, I found that older children and adolescents with AS/HFA, especially the girls with AS/HFA, performed worse on ToM measures tapping cognitive perspective taking relative to TD peers. Secondly, I observed that ToM and EF continue to develop during later childhood and adolescence as part of both typical and atypical development. Thirdly, I found that verbal WM and IC were more strongly associated with ToM in the AS/HFA group, indicating that individuals with AS/HFA may require more executive resources for ToM reasoning. Based on my results, I suggest that ToM and EF are still developing during later childhood and adolescence in both TD individuals and individuals with AS/HFA, indicating that the brain regions supporting ToM and EF processing are still plastic and can therefore be targeted for intervention.

O presente trabalho pretendeu discutir teoricamente e ilustrar com alguns casos clínicos as dificuldades de atribuição de estados mentais de crianças com autismo, estabelecendo uma articulação entre alguns conceitos da epistemologia genética piagetiana, tais como representação e egocentrismo e do constructo da teoria da mente. A teoria da mente tem sido denominada, pelos seus estudiosos, como a capacidade de atribuir estados mentais (crenças, desejos, intensões e emoções) a si e aos outros, no intuito de explicar, interpretar e predizer comportamentos e tem alcançado destaque com o passar dos anos, em relação às pesquisas sobre autismo no cenário internacional. No entanto, algumas divergências entre seus autores resultam em diferentes maneiras de mensurar esta capacidade. Leslie (1987,1988) considera que a teoria da mente já esteja presente nas brincadeiras de faz de conta infantil e no emprego dos termos mentais utilizados por crianças de dois anos de idade. Diferentemente, Perner (1991) advoga que a teoria da mente só é evidente quando a criança tem a capacidade de reconhecer que a mente é um sistema de representações, por volta de quatro a seis anos de idade. Por isso, para este último autor, somente a partir da resolução das tarefas de crença falsa é que se poderia afirmar que a criança apresenta a teoria da mente, pois, assim, significa que esta diferencie entre o subjetivo e o mundo físico. A representação mental e a construção interna do mundo real, feita pela criança, foram assuntos amplamente estudados por Jean Piaget. Piaget (1947) afirma que a criança alcança um nível de representação mental que lhe habilite a diferenciar entre o que é subjetivo do que é objetivo quando supera o egocentrismo, pois enquanto pensar que todos pensam como ela, não encontrará motivos para se conformar às verdades comuns, além de não se interessar pela busca de comprovações lógicas sobre aquilo que afirma. O pensamento egocêntrico, na epistemologia genética piagetiana, é um estágio primitivo do pensamento lógico marcado por três características: predomínio da imagem sobre o conceito, certa inconsciência do pensamento e ausência de lógica. Ancorada na epistemologia genética piagetiana e com base na realização de estudos de casos de duas crianças com autismo e uma criança com desenvolvimento neurotípico, a presente investigação concluiu que os referidos autores da teoria da mente discorrem sobre diferentes estágios desta capacidade. Além disso, por meio de entrevista clínica segundo Piaget, da análise do emprego dos termos mentais e da análise das justificativas de seus participantes em relação à tarefa de crença falsa de Sally e Ann, este estudo depreendeu que a capacidade de atribuir estados mentais ao outro requer o início da superação do egocentrismo, descrito por Piaget. Por isso, crianças com autismo, apesar de poderem empregar termos mentais em seus discursos, geralmente, têm dificuldades de diferenciar entre o subjetivo e o mundo real, apresentando tendência à representação imagética em detrimento da representação conceitual, desinteresse em comprovar o que afirmam e dificuldades em diferenciar o próprio ponto de vista do ponto de vista de outrem / This research intended to discuss theoretically and illustrate with some clinical cases the assignment difficulties of mental states of children with autism, establishing a link between the concepts of mental representation and egocentrism in Piaget\'s genetic epistemology and the theory of mind. The Theory of mind has been defined by their researchers as the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions and emotions) to onself and others, in order to explain, interpret and predict behaviors and it has achieved prominence with over the years, in relation to autism research in the international scene. However, some differences between their authors resulted in different ways to measure this capacity. Leslie (1987,1988) considers that the Theory of mind is already present in child\'s pretend play and employment of mental expressions used by children of two years. In contrast, Perner (1991) argues that the Theory of mind is only evident when the child has the ability to recognize that the mind is a system of representations about four to six years old. So, it is only after the resolution of the false-belief tasks that one could say that the child has a theory of mind, meaning that he distinguishes between the subjective and the physical world. The mental representation and the internal construction of the real world made by children were subjects extensively studied by Jean Piaget. Piaget (1947) argues that children reach a level of mental representation when they are able to differentiate between what is subjective and what is objective and when they overcome the egocentrism. While they think that everyone thinks like them, they don\'t find reasons to conform to common truths, and they won\'t be interested in seeking logical evidence about what they say. For Piaget, the egocentric thought is a primitive stage of logical thinking marked by three characteristics: predominance of the image of the concept, some unconscious thought and lack of logic. Based on Piaget\'s genetic epistemology and based on two studies case of one children with autism and one with neurotypical child development, this research concluded that these authors of the Theory of mind discourse on different stages of this capacity. Furthermore, through clinical interview, the employment of mental expressions and the analysis of the justifications of the participants in relation to the false belief task of Sally and Ann, this study concluded that the ability to attribute mental states to others requires the early overcoming of egocentrism, as described by Piaget. Therefore, children with autism, although they may employ mental expression in their speeches, they usually have difficulties to differentiate between the subjective and the real world, with a tendency to image representation at the expense of conceptual representation, unwillingness to prove what they say and difficulties in differentiate their own point of view from the other ones

Thesis advisor: Liane Young / Research in three parts used behavioral methods and fMRI to shed light on the nature of moral norms and situate them within a broader understanding of how people deploy cognition to navigate the social world. Results revealed that moral norms in two clusters: {1} “universal-rights norms” (i.e., values focused on universal rights to be unharmed and treated as an equal); and {2} “group-elevating norms” (i.e., loyalty, reciprocity, obedience to authority, and concern about purity) predicted prosocial and antisocial moral judgments, interpersonal orientations, and behaviors through cognitive mechanisms including representations of causation and theory of mind (ToM). Five studies reported in Part 1 demonstrated that universal-rights norms were positively associated with prosociality (equal allocations and willingness to help); whereas group-elevating norms were robustly positively associated with antisocial interpersonal orientations (Machiavellianism and Social Dominance Orientation). Three studies in Part 2 showed that group-elevating norms predicted antisocial moral judgments including stigmatization and blame of victims. In contrast, universal-rights values were associated with sensitivity to victims’ suffering and blame of perpetrators. Experimentally manipulating moral focus off of victims and onto perpetrators reduced victim-blaming by reducing perceptions of victims as causal and increasing perceptions of victims as forced. Effects of group-elevating norms on victim-blaming were likewise mediated by perceptions of victim causality and forcedness, suggesting that intervening on focus constitutes one way to modulate effects of moral norms on moral judgments. Four studies in Part 3 examined moral diversity within the domain of fairness and revealed that group-elevating and universal-rights norms are differentially reflected in conceptions of fairness as reciprocity, charity, and impartiality. Reciprocity and charity warranted being clustered together as person-based fairness due to their shared motivational basis in consideration of the unique states of individuals and emotion, and their robust, overlapping recruitment of neural activity indicative of ToM in PC, VMPFC and DMPFC. Impartiality, which favored no particular individual, constituted person-blind fairness, due to its reliance on standard procedures rather than the unique states of individuals or emotion, and its failure to recruit PC, VMPFC and DMPFC. In terms of fairness and moral praiseworthiness, these three allocative processes cleaved along a different line. Person-blind impartiality was rated most fair and highly moral, and person-based fairness broke apart into: charity, deemed highly moral and labeled by the most empathic participants as fair; and reciprocity, which was lowest in fairness and moral praiseworthiness ratings and most esteemed by Machiavellian individuals and those who made a greater number of self-interested allocations. Enhanced activity in LTPJ for unfairness generally, and in judgment of reciprocity in particular, pointed to a role for ToM in moral evaluation of these different conceptions of fairness. Findings across Parts 1-3 have meta-ethical implications. Reduced endorsement of universal-rights norms and increased endorsement of group-elevating norms conferred risk for antisocial judgments, interpersonal orientations and behaviors, suggesting that universal-rights norms and group-elevating norms may differ in their capacity to produce moral outcomes. Results demonstrating a role for ToM and representations of causality in the effects of moral norms on moral judgments deserve focus in future research. It will be important to determine how deeply moral values imbed into individuals’ cognitive architecture, and the extent to which effects of moral values can be modulated via interventions on basic cognition. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.

The purpose of the present study was to increase our understanding of the relations among embarrassment, Theory of Mind (ToM), and emotion dysregulation in adolescents with Asperger's Syndrome and High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA), topics that have not previously been the foci of research in this population. The research sample consisted of 42 participants, split equally between adolescents with AS/HFA and typically developing (TD) adolescents. Participants with AS/HFA were matched with TD participants for chronological age and gender. Parents of all participants, typically mothers, were also required to complete measures. Participants were presented with vignettes of embarrassing or anger inducing scenarios, following which they were asked to provide ratings indicating the degree to which they would be embarrassed or angry in the protagonists' positions. Next they were asked to justify those ratings. Results indicated that the AS/HFA group experienced greater difficulty than the TD group with measures requiring ToM abilities. This was particularly true of embarrassment/social faux pas situations. In contrast, both groups performed similarly on measures involving anger-inducing situations that require less ToM. The significant difficulty of the AS/HFA group in understanding ToM in embarrassment measures was corroborated by their poor performance on an independent ToM measure. In addition to having significant difficulty in understanding embarrassment, the AS/HFA group was significantly less able than the TD group to recount personally embarrassing experiences. Regarding emotion regulation, participants with AS/HFA were significantly less able than their TD peers to regulate their emotions through reappraisal. Similarly, parents of the AS/HFA participants reported a significantly higher level of emotion dysregulation in their children than did the parents of the TD participants. Further, participants with AS/HFA had a significantly higher utilization frequency of negative strategies than their TD peers when embarrassed, which aligned with parent report. Negative strategies included internal, verbal, and physical self-injurious behaviors, as well as destructive interpersonal behaviors, e.g., falsely accusing, yelling at, or hitting others. These findings emphasize the critical and potentially harmful impact of embarrassing experiences in the daily lives of adolescents with AS/HFA.