Joint intention understanding in children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

This study examined the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to generate joint intention-based action prediction in a joint action task. Children were presented with a series of videos in which two actors either played with blocks based on joint intention (social condition) or played with blocks independently (nonsocial condition). In the familiarization stage, two actors demonstrated how they played with blocks three times. In the test stage, one actor left the scene, and another actor grasped a block and asked where she should place it. Children's gaze behavior was assessed by an eye tracker. After watching videos, children were asked to answer two questions: an action prediction question and an intention understanding question. The results showed that in the implicit eye movement task, children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children exhibited location-based anticipatory gaze under both conditions. However, in terms of explicit behavioral responses, TD children showed higher accuracy in response to action prediction questions and intention understanding questions than children with ASD in the social condition, while no significant group difference was found in the nonsocial condition. These results indicate that children with ASD have difficulty understanding joint intention and that their action prediction is primarily driven by bottom-up sensory inputs.