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Disruptions in social processes cause significant impairment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and psychotic spectrum disorders (PSDs; Chisholm, Lin, Abu-Akel, & Wood, 2015). These conditions share aspects of behavioral expressions and genetic and environmental risk factors. Furthermore, the behaviors and cognitive styles that characterize ASD and PSDs are conceptualized as dimensional traits (autism traits and psychosis traits, respectively) present in the general population at non-clinical levels (i.e., levels that do not cause impairments in everyday functioning). One specific social cognitive process disrupted in ASD and PSDs is mentalizing - an ability that is important for the perception and understanding of others (Crespi & Badcock, 2008). Relative levels of autism traits and psychosis traits within individuals are potentially useful for understanding intact and impaired mentalizing. In individuals without clinical diagnoses, high levels of both autism traits and psychosis traits produce a "normalizing" effect on mentalizing performance, such that individuals with high levels of both sets of traits performed similarly to individuals with low levels of traits (Abu-Akel, Wood, Hansen, & Apperly, 2015). However, it is unknown whether this normalizing effect extends to individuals with clinical conditions, and such knowledge will be useful for understanding the nature of social functioning across conditions. The current study embraced a dimensional transdiagnostic approach by examining self-reported autism traits, psychosis traits, and mentalizing accuracy and levels of mentalizing in 76 adolescents and young adults with (n = 32) and without (n = 44) ASD. We hypothesized that each set of traits would negatively affect performance on the mentalizing tasks (i.e., high levels of either autism traits or psychosis traits would be related to less accurate mental state attributions and more atypical levels of mentalizing) and that concordant levels of both sets of traits (i.e., both low or both high) would be associated with a normalizing effect on mentalizing. Results showed a negative main effect of autism traits on mentalizing accuracy but not on mentalizing levels. Psychosis traits were not associated with either mentalizing accuracy or levels. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found an enhancing negative effect of concordant high levels of autism traits and psychosis traits on mentalizing levels, such that as levels of both sets of traits increased, mentalizing levels decreased. We found a similar enhancing negative effect of traits on mentalizing accuracy; however, this result did not reach statistical significance. Results from this study contribute to the conceptualization of psychopathology as arising from combinations of dimensional traits within individuals and may inform the personalization of social cognition interventions for individuals with distinct profiles of traits. |
