An Electrocortical Measure Associated With Metarepresentation Mediates the Relationship Between Autism Symptoms and Theory of Mind

Abstract

Impairments in theory of mind (ToM)—long considered common among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)—are in fact highly heterogeneous across this population. Although such heterogeneity should be reflected in differential recruitment of neural mechanisms during ToM reasoning, no research has yet uncovered a mechanism that explains these individual differences. In this study, 78 (48 with ASD) adolescents viewed ToM vignettes and made mental-state inferences about characters’ behavior while participant electrophysiology was concurrently recorded. Two candidate event-related-potentials (ERPs)—the late positive complex (LPC) and the late slow wave (LSW)—were successfully elicited. LPC scores correlated positively with ToM accuracy and negatively with ASD symptom severity. Note that the LPC partially mediated the relationship between ASD symptoms and ToM accuracy, which suggests that this ERP component, thought to represent cognitive metarepresentation, may help explain differences in ToM performance in some individuals with ASD.