The Social Psychology of Autism

Social behavior in humans evolved from the necessity to join forces against natural predators. The concept of strength in numbers allowed early hunter-gatherer groups to survive in early civilizations. Social skills such as cooperation and altruism are built on the premise that people need each other and begin with the maternal infant relationship. Aristotle emphasized the importance of the social nature of humans by suggesting the concept of society may have come before the individual. He stated that, "Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human..." (Aristotle, 328 B.C. in Aronson, 1995)
 
To be social means to be interested in and comfortable with other people (Cohen et al, 1985) and individuals who do not demonstrate these traits don't readily fit into the societal groups that human beings depend upon for survival. Labels such as antisocial, nonconformist, and social deviate have been coined to describe these individuals and in general their social behavior is seen as maladaptive (Aronson, 1995). Social non conformists threaten the very fabric of society that aims to exert influence on the beliefs and behaviors of individuals in order to build a cohesive group. Historically such social deviate individuals have been ostracized, stigmatized and even eliminated for the good of the whole. In this way an individual's social behavior is shaped to produce several desired responses to the social influence of others; compliance, identification, and internalization (Aronson, 1995).
 
Behaviorists have long suggested that all organisms respond to rewards and punishments in their exhibition of behavior (Thompson, & Iwata, 2001). Rats have been successfully conditioned to run through complicated mazes or press bars for food or to avoid electric shocks. Likewise humans comply with instructions and obey orders from others for similar consequences. It is also well documented that behavior motivated by external consequences is relatively short-lived, ceasing with the consequence is no longer available (Thompson, & Iwata, 2001). This is seen in cases where children sit quietly as long as the teacher is present in the classroom and serves as a threat of punishment for misbehavior, yet as soon as she steps outside the room aberrant behavior is rampant among the children. This is especially true for those children generally considered socially deviates since the only thing promoting their compliance to the rules are the threat of punishment.
Other children will remain quiet even when the teacher is not present. These conformists have come to identify with the teacher and other rules makers and readily adapt to the behaviors they promote. These children want to be just like the people who influence them and desire to please them. Their rewards are more social in nature that those received by children who are compliant (Aronson, 1995). When a child actually internalizes a value or belief introduced by someone else, the reward for his behavior is intrinsic (Wahler et al, 2001). These children stay quiet in the absence of the teacher because they truly believe it is the right thing to do. Even if the teacher was to tell them it is okay to get up, run around and scream when they are not in the classroom, these children will likely remain seated and quiet.
 
The Teacher in the above scenario likely has little concern for why the class is influenced to behave as she desires, as long as they do. Her goal, of course is that all of the children will eventually internalize the values she sets out and will come, someday, to behave appropriately on their own. Some children, for various reasons, simply are not influenced by the teacher no matter in any manner (Wahler et al, 2004). They misbehave even while she is in the classroom and seem not to be motivated by any type of reward, whether it is tangible, social, or intrinsic in nature. These are the ones
Aristotle suggests;
"do not partake of society" and "is either a beast or a god". (Aristotle, 328 B.C. in Aronson, 1995).
 
A group of such children were first described by Leo Kanner in 1943 as socially withdrawn. He defined the social disorder in 11 boys that he studied as an "autistic disturbance of affective contact" because of their apparent disinterest in other people and inability to be socially influenced (Kanner, 1943, in Frith, 1989). Today this disorder is commonly known as autism, one of several pervasive developmental disorders listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) developed by the American Psychiatric Association (1984).

Autism
 
Autism is a complicated neurological disorder affecting the central nervous system of a large number of individuals, primarily males (Frith & Happe', 1994). It is currently viewed as one of the most confusing developmental disorders known and its prevalence has increased dramatically over the past 10 years with no readily acceptable explanation. Current statistics suggest that as many as 1 of every 150 children born will be diagnosed with some degree of autism (Frith & Happe', 1994). Now termed autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the severity of symptoms appears in degrees ranging from near normal to severely handicapped. The disorder presents so differently in each individual affected that there is no simple description to encompass them all (Lord, et al, 1989).The typical stereotype of an individual with autism describes a withdrawn, mute child with an inverted gaze engaged in repetitive activities or self stimulatory behaviors (Mesibov & Burack, 2001). A small portion of individuals with autism are thought to be mathematical or musical prodigies with deficient mental functioning in all areas except the one in which they have special abilities (Shah & Frith, 1983).
 
Although autism is generally diagnosed near the age of 3, when the child fails to demonstrate appropriate language skills, it is now suspected that the symptoms of the disorder are also present in the form of social deficits in early infancy (Smalley, et al 1995). Infants later diagnosed with autism have demonstrated decreased responsiveness to their mothers touch, and often fail to discriminate her face and voice as do other infants (Smalley, et al, 1995). Nonverbal skills such as eye gaze often fail to appear and vocal language such as cooing and babbling develops later than usual if at all (Wing & Gould, 1979).
 
Subsets of children characterized as autistic appear to develop normally during the first year of life, with the symptoms of psychological withdrawal appearing suddenly. These children appear to slowly build protective walls around themselves and cease previous social and communicative behaviors previously displayed (Baron-Cohen, 1998). They become very set in their routines and protective of their environments. The slightest changes result in aberrant behaviors including tantrums, aggression and self injurious biting and hitting (Kennedy & Shukla, 1995).
 
One of the primary features of ASD is social interaction deficits (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). These deficits include the inability to engage in age-expected interactions, such as play as young children, and building friendships as adolescents (Happe, 1991). Even as adults individuals with autism continue to have difficulty understanding the social customs of their societies and remain socially isolated (Happe, 1991). There has been much controversy regarding the core problems with individuals with autism, but it is apparent that two primary social functions are involved. To people who interact with individuals with autism it appears that social cognition is impaired, while individuals with the disorder often report that their perception causes them the most difficulties (Cesaroni & Garber, 1991). This paper will review both aspects of development in an attempt to bring a consensus to our understanding of the social psychology of the disorder.

Social Cognition
 
Although all individuals with ASD demonstrate some degree of social impairment, not all are totally withdrawn from social interaction as Kanner (1943, in Frith, 1989) originally suggested. Many individuals with ASD are affectionate towards members of their families and others make dramatic efforts to understand and comply with social rules (Borden & Ollendick, 1994). Research into the reasons social interactions appear to be so difficult, when there is obviously a desire, lead to various theories suggesting that they suffered from dysfunctional social cognition systems (Happe, 1999; Baron-Cohen, 1985; Dodge, 1980).
 
Social cognition is the ability to identify and respond to socially relevant cues in the environment (Brehm, et al, 2005). Cognitive processing systems such as motivation, decision making and emotions are thought to be triggered when one responds to such stimuli. These stimuli represent the various mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, imagination, emotions, etc.) that cognitive psychologists believe to be the cause of actions (Baron-Cohen, 2000b). Without appropriately developed social cognition individuals have difficulty forming social relationships with others and this is evidenced by poor social behavior (Baron-Cohen, 2000b).
Social cognition deficits have been hypothesized to be present in relatives of individuals with autism to a greater degree than other groups (Baron-Cohen, 2000a). A study designed to test this theory (Smalley, et al, 1995) found that 64% of individuals with autism studied had first degree relatives with a major depressive disorder and 39% had relatives with previous diagnoses of social phobia. These rates were determined to be significantly higher than those found in control groups of individuals with known genetically linked disorders excluding autism. Interestingly these researchers also noted that the rates of social and affective disorders were higher among family members of individuals with autism who did not have co morbid mental retardation present as well (Smalley, et al, 1995).
Many Cognitive Psychologists have suggested that autism may be the result of a specific deficit in the cognitive abilities involved in the construction of a theory of mind (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Baron-Cohen, 1995; Shanker, 2004). It is often tested by using tasks where an understanding of false beliefs is demonstrated. The most famous of such tests was the Maxi and the chocolate task developed by Wimmer and Perner (1983 in Charman & Knoll, 2000). In this task a bar of chocolate is unexpectedly moved from the location where a man named Max put it when Max leaves the room. The subjects of the experiment are required to predict where Max will look for the chocolate when he returns. Results for such experiments have reliably demonstrated that only children over the age of three can make the correct predictions (Charman & Knoll, 2000).
 
These false belief tests where applied to individuals with autism by Baron-Cohen (1985). He hypothesized that the deficits in communication and social skills seen in autism indicate that the theory of mind ability is impaired and replications of the false belief tests confirmed the theory. Other studies that have compared children with autism and mental age matched retarded and normal children, have found that the ASD children do not perform as well on tasks that require them to infer what someone else intends to do (Buitelaar, et al, 1991).
 
This phenomenon is sometimes called 'mind blindness' because these individuals appear unable to decipher mental states in their own or others minds (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Happe, 1999). It also seems that individuals in a state of mind blindness do not visually orient to more than one social stimulus at a time and have difficulty sharing attention with others. Both of these traits are well documented to be deficient in individuals diagnosed with ASD (Trepagnier, 1997; Mundy, et al, 1986; Frith & Happe, 1994; Dawson & Fernald, 1987).
 
Baron-Cohen, et al (2002) has proposed that the ability to orient to social stimuli is effected by the cognitive processing skills of empathizing and systemizing. Both are related to the way in which we perceive others and respond to our perceptions. In his recent hypothesis that autism may be a form of extreme maleness, Baron-Cohen, et al (2002) defined empathizing as the ability to identify and respond to the emotions and thoughts of others. This ties into previous implications of theory of mind deficits in the disorder and suggests that empathizing is necessary to predict the behavior of others. This hypothesis also supports conclusions found by researchers studying facial expressions. They also have proposed that the lack of ability to respond empathetically to others based on nonverbal cues is suggestive of impairment in developing a conceptual understanding that other people have minds.
 
Baron-Cohen, et al (2002) describes systemizing as the ability to use if-then rules to determine outcomes in a specific situation such as a social system. It is developed through repeated observation of an event and building patterns of association based on variations of outcome when variable are changed. In social situations humans systemize what to say and how to respond to others in certain contexts, but are not necessarily related to the cues given by another person. For example we learn to raise our hands in school to ask a question by observation, but we need the ability to empathize to know how the way we ask it will affect the teacher.
In effect systemizing helps us to understand the law governed inanimate universe, where as empathizing helps us understand and predict the social world. Baron-Cohen, et al (2002) suggests that these two processes are inherently different between males and females with males being likely to systemize more and thus be more socially inapt. Such a theory effectively accounts for the deficits seen in autism. Since social communication and relationship building are highly dependent on the ability to empathize, it would be expected that individuals with autism, who traditionally have difficulties in these areas, would have lower empathizing capabilities (Lord & Hopkins, 1986). Conversely many individuals with autism perform exceptionally well on visual spatial tasks such as mathematics, art, and music (Lincoln, et al, 1995; Grandin, 1995; Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1997Shah & Frith, 1983). These are domains where systemic processing would be high and are usually dominated by men.
 
Systemizing results in greater attention to detail and a preference for factual, rule governed informational structures. Individuals with autism tend to perform better than the norm on tasks that test such skills such as the Embedded Figures Task (EFT) (Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1997), intuitive physics tests, and visual search tasks (Shah & Frith, 1993), and males tend to perform better than females on such tasks (Baron-Cohen, et al, 2002) . Law based closed systems such as architecture, engineering and computers are also well accepted by both males and individuals with autism, who are also predominately male (Baron-Cohen, et al, 2002).

Social Perception
 
The acceptance of deficiencies in the empathizing process of individuals with autism can provide greater understanding of the behaviors they display. Since they would not be able to predict the behavior of others readily we would expect an avoidance of unpredictable situations, things and people. This is evident in the tantrums and obsessive behaviors these individuals exhibit in an effort to control and maintain sameness in their environments (Dodge, 1980).
 
Another plausible reason for such behavior has been suggested by some researchers. While they agree that the development of social understanding and empathy is flawed in individuals with autism, they propose that these deficits may be secondary to an underlying biological problem affecting the sensory processing system (Frith & Happe, 1994; Lincoln, et al, 1995; Mottron & Burack, 2001).
 
The hypothesis that the ability to understand someone else's thoughts and emotions is a result of sensory over-and under-reactivity that make it difficult for individuals with autism to engage in social interactive experiences is supported by self reports from high functioning individuals who suffer from the disorder (Grandin, 1995; Happe. 1991; Holliday-Willey, 1999). In, almost all reports of early childhood experiences, individuals with autism describe difficulties with social perception as a major problem in being able to deal with social interactions. (Volkmar , et al, 1989; Ozonoff & Miller, 1995; McGee, et al, 1997;Cohen, 1985; Jolliffe et al., 1997).
 
These first hand accounts highlight sensory modulation as interfering with the way in which they perceive the world. These children relate experiences of fear of objects (Jolliffe et al., 1997), and places (Volkmar, et al, 1989; Grandin, 1995) that expose the child to uncomfortable auditory, visual (Jolliffe et al., 1997; Robbins, 1997), and tactile stimulation (Cesaroni & Garber, 1991; Jolliffe et al., 1997). It appears that it is the inability to appropriately filter out irrelevant stimuli that result in the attention deficits and stimulus over selectivity common to the disorder (Grandin, 1995; Cesaroni & Garber, 1991).
 
Lincoln, et al (1995) agrees that sensory modulation may be at the root of the social withdrawal seen in autism as the child attempts to block out the bombardment of stimuli in their environments. This often results in a deficiency in the amount of stimuli that is available for social perception. The effects appear to be pervasive across all sensory domains including proprioception, kinesthetic sense, sense of self and other, visualization, sequencing, synthesis, analysis, and retrieval (Happe. 1991).
 
These sensory processing difficulties and the corresponding socio-emotional relating problems that generally accompany them have been noted as early as infancy in children diagnosed with ASD (Borden & Ollendick, 1994; Shah & Frith, 1983). Various longitudinal studies of infants later diagnosed with autism show empty eye gaze, poor response to name, aloofness, reduced looking-at-faces, and deficits in directing attention (Mottron & Burack, 2001). It appears that these skills, as well as impairments in early social-communication skills and joint attention are present long before speech and mind blindness develop even in typical children(Koegel & Mentis, 1985; Shanker, 2004; Wing & Gould, 1979).
Developmental theories on attachment and affective responsiveness have suggested that children with impaired social emotional relating in infancy will not develop appropriate social understanding and as a result social interaction and communication skills will suffer (Kennedy & Shukla, 1995). The social interaction, communication, and idiosyncratic approaches to learning noted in children with autism have also been described in children raised in orphanages where human contact is minimal and those children who are otherwise deprived of appropriate social relatedness experiences (Kennedy & Shukla, 1995).
 
Researchers in developmental social psychology have long known that mothers play an important role in social development in many species (Leekam, et al, 1998). Some primates, such as rats and apes use their senses of smell and touch to relate social information to their offspring. By far most primates make use of the visual senses to communicate social perceptions, thus deficits in this area result in profound disabilities such as those seen in autism (Adolph, et al, 2001). Indeed it appears that the visual perceptual domain in individuals with autism is often the most seriously affected of all of the senses and may be either positively or negatively affected.
 
Temple Grandin (1995), an individual with autism has reported that she 'thinks in pictures', using visual information to form categories. There is also evidence that some individuals with autism perform much better on block design and visual discrimination tasks on IQ tests Shah & Frith, 1983, 1993), and many have also demonstrated exceptional artistic ability (Mottron & Burack, 2001).This suggests that they may have a relative strength in the visual-spatial area. Others demonstrate negative symptoms in the visual-perceptual domain such as the absence of eye contact during interpersonal interaction and deficits in recognizing visually presented faces and facial emotions (Adolph, et al, 2001).
 
Neuropsychology has sought to identify specific regions of the brain that can explain the social cognitive, social perceptual and social behavior deficits in autism (Baron-Cohen, et al, 2000). One area that has been associated with all of these functions is the amygdala. The amygdala plays an important role in emotion and social behavior by linking perceptual representations to cognition and behavior on the basis of the emotional or social value of the stimuli (Baron-Cohen, et al, 2000). Studies of monkeys with amygdala damage show that they are also severely impaired in their social behavior and functional imaging studies have shown that the amygdala is activated when normal subjects view facial expressions of fear (Baron-Cohen, et al, 2000) Since recent evidence suggests that individuals with autism have abnormalities in their amygdala, this could account for their apparent inability to recognize fearful situations and tendency to judge people to look more trustworthy and more approachable than normal subjects do in tests of facial expressions.
 
Soliciting information from facial expressions is a nonverbal communicative tool that has been endorsed by social psychologists as playing a substantial role in social cognition ability. (Adolph, et al, 2001) conducted four experiments using high functioning individuals with autism in an effort to assess their ability to recognize emotional and social information from faces. They found that all of the subjects had difficulty making social judgements regarding the trustworthiness of the individuals from facial cues even though they were able to effectively discriminate between different expressions (Adolph, et al, 2001).

Conclusion
 
Proponents of theory of mind suggest that people with autism lack the ability to comprehend thoughts and experiences that occur outside of themselves (Happe, 1991). The difficulty in understanding the mental thoughts of others often results in bizarre communication patterns (Happe, 1999). This mind blindness also appears to interfere with the ability to identify with others or to understand another person's point of view (Shanker, 2004). These problems result in the social relatedness difficulties common to autism (Baron-Cohen, 1995).
 
Other researchers have demonstrated that autism may be conceptualized as more of a difference in social cognition rather than a dysfunction (Baron-Cohen, 1995). There have been documentations that suggest the social behaviors of these individuals can be extremely variable depending on age and environmental context (Lord & Hopkins, 1986). It seems that contrary to previous beliefs, not all individuals with autism are uninterested in all other people and many are indeed very social in familiar, but unstructured social contexts (Mckean, 1996). It is plausible that such behavior, which is also common to males in general, is a result of using systemizing cognitive processing to a greater degree than seen in the general population (Baron-Cohen, et al, 2000).
 
Perception also plays a prominent role in the social psychology of autism as evidenced by the biographical accounts from individuals who actually experience autism (Grandin, 1995; Cesaroni & Garber, 1991). They have indicated that they perceive incoming sensory stimuli differently than others and this leads them to pick up somewhat different information than other persons would in the same situation. They see the sensory, experiential, and cognitive differences that they experience as simply a different way to understand the world, just these differences are commonly used to define Deaf culture (Cesaroni & Garber, 1991). As young children they rarely even realize that there sensory experiences are different than those of others and may even exhibit perceptual skills well above their typical peers (Happe, 1991). Social motivation is apparent, particularly in those with normal levels of intelligence, as they become aware that they are different from others (Koegel & Mentis, 1985; Cesaroni & Garber, 199 I). They are able to make valiant efforts to understand and master sRocial skills cognitively and to conform to social expectations (Grandin, 1995; Cesaroni & Garber, 1991).
 
It is apparent that individuals with autism are unique in the way that they experience the world and both their strengths and deficits must be taken into account in order to understand and relate to them (Happe', 1991). They have demonstrated extraordinary methods for interacting with society and organizing the stimuli that they are exposed to and in the process have brought to light indices of a complexity in social behavior that is beyond our current levels of understanding.

By: LRae