Advisory Committee Chair
Rajesh K Kana
Advisory Committee Members
Sarah E O'Kelley
Fred J Biasini
Timothy R Levine
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2020
Degree Name by School
Master of Arts (MA) College of Arts and Sciences
Abstract
Despite extensive research on social cognition in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), investigations focused on the vulnerability of this population to deception have received rather limited attention. The role of executive function (EF) skills in detecting deception is even less understood in both typically developing (TD) and ASD populations. The dearth of current research on deception in ASD and the social implications of poor deception detection exemplify the need to understand the mechanisms that underlie this nuanced form of social interaction. The current study aims to investigate the neuropsychological mechanisms of detecting deception and the extent to which autism symptomatology impacts detecting deception in adults with and without ASD (n=30, ages 18-30). Participants completed a short battery of tests to assess EF skills (WASI-II, selected D-KEFS subtests), questionnaires to assess self-report ratings of autism symptomatology (SRS-2, AQ, EQ, and RMET) and EF (BRIEF-A), and a welldocumented deception detection task that required participants to make judgements about whether subjects in the videotaped vignettes were telling the truth or telling a lie. These videos spanned across veracity matched (sincere truth-tellers and insincere liars) and veracity mismatched (insincere truth-tellers and sincere liars) conditions. Results indicate that while controlling for age, gender, and FSIQ, both self-rated autism symptomatology (AQ Total Score) and EF skills (D-KEFS Tower Total Achievement Scaled Score and ii BRIEF-A GEC T-Score) uniquely impacted deception detection ability across different demeanor-based conditions. Increased ratings of autism symptoms predicted higher accuracy rates in the mismatched condition, while EF skills were most important for accurately detecting lies in the matched condition. Theory of mind (RMET) and truthbias (the tendency to believe others are telling the truth) were not related to task performance. Overall, these findings suggest that increased autism symptoms may place individuals with ASD at an advantage in some aspects of lie-detection, as they may be less likely to be manipulated by misleading social cues. Meanwhile, executive skills appear to be most important for lie-detection when the accompanying social cues are consistent with the individual’s veracity. These results provide insights to the mechanisms underlying deception detection in autism and related social-communication weaknesses.
Recommended Citation
Trapani, Julie A., "Mislead: An Investigation of Neuropsychological Mechanisms Underlying Deception Detection in Autism Spectrum Disorder" (2020). All ETDs from UAB. 650.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/650