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Ferguson HJ, Wimmer L, Black J, et al. Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study. J Autism Dev Disord. 2021;52(1):349-360doi: 10.1007/s10803-021-04939-4.
Ferguson, H. J., Wimmer, L., Black, J., Barzy, M., & Williams, D. (2022). Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 52(1), 349-360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04939-4
Ferguson, Heather J, et al. "Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study." Journal of autism and developmental disorders vol. 52,1 (2022): 349-360. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04939-4
Ferguson HJ, Wimmer L, Black J, Barzy M, Williams D. Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study. J Autism Dev Disord. 2022 Jan;52(1):349-360. doi: 10.1007/s10803-021-04939-4. Epub 2021 Mar 11. PMID: 33704612.
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J Autism Dev Disord. 2022 Jan;52(1):349-360. doi: 10.1007/s10803-021-04939-4. Epub 2021 Mar 11.

Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study.

Journal of autism and developmental disorders

Heather J Ferguson, Lena Wimmer, Jo Black, Mahsa Barzy, David Williams

Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NP, England, UK. [email protected].
  2. School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NP, England, UK.

PMID: 33704612 DOI: 10.1007/s10803-021-04939-4

Abstract

We report an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment that tests whether autistic adults are able to maintain and switch between counterfactual and factual worlds. Participants (N = 48) read scenarios that set up a factual or counterfactual scenario, then either maintained the counterfactual world or switched back to the factual world. When the context maintained the world, participants showed appropriate detection of the inconsistent critical word. In contrast, when participants had to switch from a counterfactual to factual world, they initially experienced interference from the counterfactual context, then favoured the factual interpretation of events. None of these effects were modulated by group, despite group-level impairments in Theory of Mind and cognitive flexibility among the autistic adults. These results demonstrate that autistic adults can appropriately use complex contextual cues to maintain and/or update mental representations of counterfactual and factual events.

© 2021. Crown.

Keywords: Autism; Counterfactuals; Event-related potentials; Language comprehension; N400

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