Social Cognition and Friendships in Adolescents With Autistic-Like Experiences and Psychotic-Like Experiences

Hester Sijtsma; Nikki C Lee; Miriam Hollarek; Reubs J Walsh; Mariët van Buuren; Barbara R Braams; Lydia Krabbendam

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.589824

Social Cognition and Friendships in Adolescents With Autistic-Like Experiences and Psychotic-Like Experiences

Front Psychiatry. 2021 Jan 15:11:589824. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.589824. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Hester Sijtsma¹, Nikki C Lee¹, Miriam Hollarek¹, Reubs J Walsh¹, Mariët van Buuren¹, Barbara R Braams¹, Lydia Krabbendam¹

Affiliation

¹ Section of Clinical Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Sciences, Research Institute LEARN!, Institute of Brain and Behavior, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Abstract

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and schizophrenia spectrum conditions (SSC) are both characterized by changes in social-cognitive functioning. Less is known about the overlap and the differences in social-cognitive functioning when comparing individuals with subclinical levels of ASC and SSC, while studies in non-clinical samples have the benefit of avoiding confounds that are present in clinical groups. Therefore, we first examined how autistic-like experiences, positive psychotic-like experiences and the co-occurrence of both correlated with the performance on an extensive battery of social cognition tasks in young adolescents. Second, we examined the effect of autistic-like experiences, psychotic-like experiences and their co-occurrence on friendships in daily life. A total of 305 adolescents (Mage = 12.6, sd = 0.4, 147 boys) participated in the current study. A battery of social cognition tasks, comprising the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task, Dot perspective task and trust game were individually administered in a classroom setting, along with a friendship peer nomination questionnaire. Results indicated no evidence for a relationship between the performance on the social cognition battery and subclinical experiences of autism and/or psychosis. However, results did show that the amount of autistic-like experiences of adolescents were associated with being less often selected as a friend by their peers. By contrast, no relationship between self-reported friendships and autistic-like experiences was found. Neither a relationship between friendships and psychotic-like experiences was reported. This study provides initial evidence that information provided by peers may shed light on (altered) social behavior associated with autistic-like experiences that is not apparent on performance measures, as well as elucidate possible differences between autistic- and psychotic-like experiences.

Keywords: autistic-like experiences; friendships; non-clinical samples; psychotic-like experiences; social cognition.