The cognitive basis of social ability in adolescents: Social motivation and Theory of Mind

对朋友或同事的片刻反思会导致强烈的直觉，即有些人比其他人拥有更好的社交技能，这种直觉得到了日常社交能力中典型和非典型差异的测量结果的支持（例如，Baron-Cohen等人，2013; Constantino等人，2002年）。然而，这种差异的根本原因尚不清楚。一种可能性是，我们的“心理理论”（ToM）可能会有所不同;思考他人所见、所知、所想、所想和意图的能力。ToM在儿童中得到了大量研究，是社会互动和沟通的基本基础，并且在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者中明显受损，这与社会沟通障碍有关。然而，传统的心理理论方法一直狭隘地集中在儿童的概念能力6岁，所以我们知道很少的发展如何继续，或如何使用我们的心理理论的能力与动机相互作用，以产生社会能力的变化。在拟议的研究中调查这些关系是对ToM方法用于理解童年中期及以后社会发展的实用性的关键测试，并将提供对ASD患者中观察到的社会障碍的见解，这些ASD患者在ToM和社会动机方面都表现出缺陷。该项目将利用任务中令人兴奋的进步来测试ToM能力，并将使用最先进的方法来测量和数据建模。这将是第一次在任何年龄组中检验心理理论、社会动机和社会能力之间的关系。一个关键的年龄范围（11- 15岁），当青少年获得熟练使用基本的心理理论能力，但社会能力正在发生巨大的变化，将有针对性的。通过测试这些青少年的临床相关措施的工作将提供新的假设，为未来的工作在ASD的社会困难。该项目将实现一种复杂的分析方法，即结构方程模型允许将关键因素（ToM和动机）建模为潜在变量。先前的研究预期，更高的社会动机和更好的心理理论表现将预测更高的社会能力。这项工作将提供迄今为止最有力的证据，证明社会动机的作用，关键是，将有可能测试心理理论和动机的影响是否在统计上是独特的或相关的。一个重要的可能性是，更多的社会动机的个人更有效地使用他们的心理理论，因此更有社会能力。心理理论在社会动机对社会能力的影响中起中介作用。

A moment's reflection on friends or colleagues leads to the strong intuition that some people have better social skills than others, and this intuition is supported by measures showing both typical and atypical variation in everyday social ability (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al., 2013; Constantino et al., 2002). However, the underlying reasons for such variation are unclear. One possibility is that we might vary in our "theory of mind" (ToM); the ability to think about what others see, know, think, want and intend. ToM has been heavily researched in children, is a fundamental basis of social interaction and communication, and is distinctively impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is associated with social communication impairments. However, the traditional approach to ToM has been narrowly focussed on the conceptual competence in children up to 6 years, so we know little about how development continues, or how the ability to use our ToM interacts with motivation to produce variation in social ability. Investigating these relationships in the proposed research is a critical test of the utility of the ToM approach for understanding social development in middle childhood and beyond and will provide insights into the social impairments observed in individuals with ASD, who show deficits in both ToM and social motivation. The project will draw upon exciting advances in tasks to test ToM abilities and will use a state-of-the-art approach to measurement and data modelling. It will be the first examination of the relations between ToM, social motivation and social competence in any age group. A critical age-range (11- 15 years) when adolescents are gaining proficiency in the use of basic ToM abilities, but social competence is undergoing dramatic change, will be targeted. By testing these adolescents on clinically relevant measures the work will provide new hypotheses for future work on social difficulties in ASD. This project will enable a sophisticated analysis approach whereby structural equation modeling allows key factors (ToM and motivation) to be modeled as latent variables. Previous research leads to the expectation that both higher social motivation and better ToM performance will predict higher social competence. This work will provide the strongest evidence to date on the role of social motivation, and critically, will make it possible to test whether the effects of ToM and motivation are statistically unique or related. An important possibility is that more socially motivated individuals use their ToM more effectively and so are more socially capable. This would be evidenced by ToM mediating the effect of social motivation on social ability.