Action prediction in autistic and non-autistic observers with perceptual and cognitive load

Abstract

According to the broken mirror neuron theory of autism, autistic individuals are less efficient at mapping the behaviors of others onto their own bodily representations, which leads to difficulties in imitating and understanding others’ actions. However, limited research has explored the broken mirror neuron theory within the context of action prediction, the application of action understanding. In a pilot study, I employed a modified version of the pointing task where autistic and non-autistic participants predicted whether a target actor would point to the right or left without knowing that the actors were either instructed or allowed to choose freely where to point. I expanded on the original study by incorporating trials with perceptual or cognitive load. For the former, three actors were shown instead of just one, requiring the observer to respond to the actions of one target actor. For the latter, the observer was required to guess the target actor’s actions by pressing a key that is in the opposite (anti) direction as the target actor’s predicted pointing direction, as opposed to the same (pro) direction. All observers responded faster in the trials where the target actor chose freely where to point, called the choice advantage. However, an analysis of the autistic and non-autistic groups separately indicated that the choice advantage was observed in all experimental conditions in the non-autistic cohort but was reduced to the 1-actor, anti-pointing trials in the autistic group. These results indicate that autistic individuals may not be using body-language cues to predict the actions of others as effectively as non-autistic individuals, while offering a more nuanced perspective on autistic peoples’ understanding of others’ actions than the broken mirror neuron theory.