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Assessing Moral Cognitive Skills in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorders
Sponsor: Hôpital le Vinatier
Summary
In the international literature, it is currently accepted that, relative to neurotypicals, people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) present patterns of moral judgments marked by a minimization of intentionality and a strong condemnation of agents responsible for accidents. However, until now, all studies are based on declarative paradigms, and no one has proposed to examine the relationship of people with ASD to moral transgressions (i.e. to a bad action done deliberately or to a good deed deliberately omitted) in an implicit paradigm, that is, when the answer is made on the assignment of an expressive face to these moral offenses. Furthermore, no study has investigated whether diminished sensitivity to intention and intransigence of incidental judgment occur in both automatic (implicit) and deliberative (explicit) settings. Investigators planned to study how people with ASD without intellectual disability process emotions expressed by others in response to different forms of moral offense and to examine whether patterns potentially contrast in degree and/or kind with those of neurotypicals.
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
18 Years - 40 Years
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
60
Start Date
2023-05-02
Completion Date
2026-05-06
Last Updated
2026-06-10
Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Conditions
Interventions
Neuropsychological assessments (tests allowing to measures attentional, executive and emotional performances) and experimental protocol assessing moral cognition
Day 0: sending of the information notice Day 1 : signing the consent form + neuropsychological tests assessing reasoning and abstraction abilities, attentional processes, executive functions (including inhibition and mental flexibility) and social cognitive functions, including facial emotion recognition, theory of mind and perception and social knowledge (duration 1h30-2h). Experimental protocol: vignettes of moral offenses manipulating variables of intention and consequence. This systematic manipulation, commonly used in the field of moral judgment, usually leads to 3 combinations of variables: intentional harm (present intention; present consequence); attempted harm (intent present; consequence absent); accidental harm (intention absent; consequence present). Another form of accidental harm will also be constructed (positive intention; present consequence) (duration : 1h) Between day 1 and day 21 : second part of the Day 1 tests
Locations (1)
centre de réhabilitation - Hôpital le Vinatier
Lyon, Rhône, France