The Role of Theory of Mind in Moral Cognition among Adult Patients with Asperger Syndrome

EZEQUIEL GLEICHGERRCHT; ALEXIA RATTAZZI; VICTORIA MARENCO; MARÍA ROCA; TERESA TORRALVA; FACUNDO MANES

New Orleans

Congreso; Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology; 2012

American Academy of Neurology

Objective: To investigate the relationship between social cognition and moral judgment in adult patients with High Functioning Autism / Asperger Syndrome (HFA/AS). Background Faced with a moral dilemma, conflict arises between a cognitive controlled response aimed at maximizing welfare, i.e. the utilitarian judgment, and an emotional aversion to harm, i.e. the deontological judgment. In the present study we investigated moral judgment in adult patients with high functioning autism / Asperger syndrome (HFA/AS), a clinical population characterized by impairments in prosocial emotions and social cognition. Design/Methods: We compared the response patterns of HFA/AS patients (n = 36) and neurotypical controls (n = 36) to moral dilemmas with low and high emotional saliency. We further explored the way in which demographic, clinical, and social cognition variables including emotional and cognitive aspects of empathy and theory of mind influenced moral judgment. Results: We found that HFA/AS patients were more frequently willing than controls to cause direct harm onto an agent, i.e., they more frequently delivered the utilitarian judgment. Their perception of appropriateness of this moral transgression was similar to that of controls, but HFA/AS patients reported decreased levels of emotional reaction to the dilemma. We also found that utilitarian HFA/AS patients showed a decreased ability to infer other people's thoughts and to understand their intentions, as measured both by performance on neuropsychological tests and through dispositional measures. Conclusions: We conclude that greater prevalence of utilitarianism in HFA/AS is associated with difficulties in specific aspects of social cognition. Our findings further support the role of emotions in moral judgment.