Strategic Deception in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Bob van Tiel*, Gaétane Deliens, Philippine Geelhand, Anke Murillo Oosterwijk, Mikhail Kissine

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often associated with impaired perspective-taking skills. Deception is an important indicator of perspective-taking, and therefore may be thought to pose difficulties to people with ASD (e.g., Baron-Cohen in J Child Psychol Psychiatry 3:1141–1155, 1992). To test this hypothesis, we asked participants with and without ASD to play a computerised deception game. We found that participants with ASD were equally likely—and in complex cases of deception even more likely—to deceive and detect deception, and learned deception at a faster rate. However, participants with ASD initially deceived less frequently, and were slower at detecting deception. These results suggest that people with ASD readily engage in deception but may do so through conscious and effortful reasoning about other people’s perspective.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)255-266
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
Volume51
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 May 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was funded by F.R.S.-FNRS Research Incentive Grant F.4502.15 (PI: M. Kissine) and by the German Research Council (Grant DFG FR 3482/2-1, KR 951/14-1, SA 925/17-1) within SPP 1727 (XPRAG.de), which are gratefully acknowledged.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).

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