Social cognition
Social skills and self-control in kids with autism and ADHD
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
While children with both autism and ADHD struggle with social reasoning, those with autism face more severe difficulties applying these skills in daily life, which are linked to different underlying self-control issues.
Key findings
Both clinical groups scored lower than typically developing peers on laboratory tests of emotion recognition and verbal social reasoning. However, parental ratings of real-life social application revealed a clear gradient: children with autism struggled the most, those with ADHD showed intermediate difficulties, and typically developing children performed the best. Furthermore, social deficits in ADHD were linked to behavioral control (like impulsivity), whereas in autism they were tied to initiation and planning issues.
Methodology
Researchers compared 126 children aged 7 to 11, including 52 with high-functioning autism, 35 with ADHD, and 39 with typical development. They measured emotional recognition and social reasoning using laboratory tests, parental reports of daily behavior, and teacher evaluations of executive functioning. The groups were matched on average age, overall IQ, and language abilities.
Limitations
Because of the cross-sectional design, this study cannot prove whether self-control deficits cause social difficulties or vice versa. The clinical samples were heavily skewed toward males, with over 91.42% of the autism group and 94.3% of the ADHD group being boys, meaning the results might not fully apply to girls. Additionally, high medication rates—such as 71.4% of the ADHD group taking psychostimulants—and a reliance on subjective teacher ratings for executive functions limit the generalizability of these findings.
How this study connects
Role on claims
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Children and adults on the autism spectrum frequently struggle with applying social reasoning in real-life, daily situations, even when they demonstrate high performance on structured, explicit laboratory mind-reading tests.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
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