Conditional Reasoning in Autism:Activation and Integration of Knowledge and Belief

摘要

Everyday conditional reasoning is typically influenced by prior knowledge and belief in the form ofspecific exceptions known as counterexamples. This study explored whether adolescents with autismspectrum disorder (ASD; N = 26) were less influenced by background knowledge than typicallydeveloping adolescents (N = 38) when engaged in conditional reasoning. Participants were presentedwith pretested valid and invalid conditional inferences with varying available counterexamples. Thegroup with ASD showed significantly less influence of prior knowledge on valid inferences (p = .01)and invalid inferences (p = .01) compared with the typical group. In a secondary probability judgmenttask, no significant group differences were found in probabilistic judgments of the believability of thepremises. Further experiments found that results could not be explained by differences between thegroups in the ability to generate counterexamples or any tendency among adolescents with ASD toexhibit a "yes" response pattern. It was concluded that adolescents with ASD tend not to spontaneouslycontextualize presented material when engaged in everyday reasoning. These findings are discussed withreference to weak central coherence theory and the conditional reasoning literature.