Differences in self‐other control as cognitive mechanism to characterize theory of mind reasoning in autistic and non‐autistic adults

In cognitive science, altered Theory of Mind is a central pillar of etiological models of autism. Yet, recent evidence, showing comparable Theory of Mind abilities in autistic and non-autistic people, draws a more complex picture and renders previous descriptions of Theory of Mind abilities in autism and their role in autistic symptomatology insufficient. Here, we addressed self-other control as a potential candidate cognitive mechanism to explain subtle Theory of Mind reasoning differences between autistic and non-autistic adults. We investigated flexible shifting between another's and one's own congruent or incongruent points of view, an ability that is important for reciprocal social interaction. Measuring response accuracy and reaction time in a multiple-trial unexpected location false belief task, we found evidence for altered self-other control in Theory of Mind reasoning in autistic adults, with a relative difficulty in flexibly considering the other's perspective and less interference of the other's incongruent viewpoint when their own perspective is considered. Our results add to previous findings that social cognitive differences are there but subtle and constitute one step further in characterizing Theory of Mind reasoning in autism and explaining communication and interaction difficulties with non-autistic people in everyday life

The Personal Dimension of Professional Responsibility

The development of a professional responsibility course at the University of Houston Law Center that focused on the personal dimension of professional reponsibility is described. Mixon and Schuwerk present an evaluation of their experience with the course and a critique of that effort

Carbon Asset Risk: From Rhetoric To Action

This paper, first presented at the 1st Global Stranded Assets Conference, hosted by the Smith School in Oxford September 2015, looks at developments over the past two years around the concepts of carbon asset risk, stranded assets and wasted capital in relation to the fossil fuel industry. We draw on NGO and market research, and corporate and investor activity. The focus is on establishing a framework for analysis and assessing how investors and corporations are responding in terms of risk management, disclosure, corporate capital expenditures and the implications for investors in terms of portfolio management, engagement and divestment. This is done in the context of share and commodity markets. We show that carbon asset risk (CAR) is in the process of moving from discussion and acknowledgement to action and impact

Untersuchung der Ventrikel- und Vorhoffunktion bei Kindern, Jugendlichen und Erwachsenen mit Transposition der großen Arterien nach arterieller Switch-Operation: eine MRT-Studie

Die Transposition der großen Arterien (TGA) stellt einen seltenen, jedoch schweren angeborenen Herzfehler dar und wird zur Gruppe der zyanotischen Herzfehler gezählt. Die Standard-Therapie für dieses Krankheitsbild ist die arterielle Switch-Operation (ASO). Im Rahmen der postoperativen Nachkontrollen von TGA-Patienten nach ASO wird die kardiovaskuläre Magnetresonanztomografie (MRT) routinemäßig eingesetzt. Obwohl insgesamt von einem guten klinischen Ergebnis bei Patienten nach ASO berichtet wird, gibt es Studien, die auf eine eingeschränkte Ventrikel- und Vorhoffunktion hinweisen. Ziel dieser Studie war die umfassende Analyse der kardialen Funktion von TGA-Patienten nach ASO mittels kardiovaskulärer MRT im Vergleich mit einer geeigneten Kontrollgruppe herzgesunder Probanden. Es wurden Volumina und Massen beider Ventrikel bestimmt sowie Parameter zur Beurteilung der Längsachsenfunktion erhoben. Außerdem wurden mittels MRT-Feature-Tracking Bewegungs- und Deformationsparameter (sog. Strain-Parameter) des linken und rechten Ventrikels sowie beider Vorhöfe gemessen. Zur statistischen Auswertung wurden neben nicht-parametrischer Testverfahren zusätzlich noch Machine-Learning-Verfahren angewandt. Letztlich zeigte sich, dass insbesondere die rechtsventrikuläre Längsachsenfunktion sowie die linksventrikläre diastolische Funktion bei den TGA-Patienten eingeschränkt war

Evidence for goal- and mixed evidence for false belief-based action prediction in 2- to 4-year-old children: A large-scale longitudinal anticipatory looking replication study

Unsuccessful replication attempts of paradigms assessing children's implicit tracking of false beliefs have instigated the debate on whether or not children have an implicit understanding of false beliefs before the age of four. A novel multi-trial anticipatory looking false belief paradigm yielded evidence of implicit false belief reasoning in 3- to 4-year-old children using a combined score of two false belief conditions (Grosse Wiesmann, C., Friederici, A. D., Singer, T., & Steinbeis, N. [2017]. Developmental Science, 20(5), e12445). The present study is a large-scale replication attempt of this paradigm. The task was administered three times to the same sample of N = 185 children at 2, 3, and 4 years of age. Using the original stimuli, we did not replicate the original finding of above-chance belief-congruent looking in a combined score of two false belief conditions in either of the three age groups. Interestingly, the overall pattern of results was comparable to the original study. Post-hoc analyses revealed, however, that children performed above chance in one false belief condition (FB1) and below chance in the other false belief condition (FB2), thus yielding mixed evidence of children's false belief-based action predictions. Similar to the original study, participants’ performance did not change with age and was not related to children's general language skills. This study demonstrates the importance of large-scaled replications and adds to the growing number of research questioning the validity and reliability of anticipatory looking false belief paradigms as a robust measure of children's implicit tracking of beliefs

The robustness and generalizability of findings on spontaneous false belief sensitivity: a replication attempt

Influential studies showed that 25-month-olds and neurotypical adults take an agent's false belief into account in their anticipatory looking patterns (Southgate et al. 2007 Psychol. Sci. 18, 587-592 (doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x);Senju et al. 2009 Science 325, 883-885 (doi: 10.1126/science.1176170)). These findings constitute central pillars of current accounts distinguishing between implicit and explicit Theory of Mind. In our first experiment, which initially included a replication as well as two manipulations, we failed to replicate the original finding in 2- to 3-year-olds (N = 48). Therefore, we ran a second experiment with the sole purpose of seeing whether the effect can be found in an independent, tightly controlled, sufficiently powered and preregistered replication study. This replication attempt failed again in a sample of 25-month-olds (N = 78), but was successful in a sample of adults (N = 115). In all samples, a surprisingly high number of participants did not correctly anticipate the agent's action during the familiarization phase. This led to massive exclusion rates when adhering to the criteria of the original studies and strongly limits the interpretability of findings from the test phase. We discuss both the reliability of our replication attempts as well as the replicability of non-verbal anticipatory looking paradigms of implicit false belief sensitivity, in general