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

对朋友或同事的片刻思考会导致一种强烈的直觉，即有些人比其他人有更好的社交技能，这种直觉得到了日常社交能力中典型和非典型变化的测量的支持(例如，Baron-Cohen等人，2013；Constantino等人，2002)。然而，造成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)可能有所不同，即思考他人所见、所知、所想、所想、所欲的能力。心理理论在儿童中已有大量研究，是社会交往和交流的基本基础，在患有自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)的个体中明显受损，自闭症谱系障碍与社交障碍有关。然而，传统的TOM方法一直局限于6岁以下儿童的概念能力，因此我们对儿童如何继续发展，或者使用TOM的能力如何与动机相互作用产生社会能力的变化知之甚少。在拟议的研究中调查这些关系是对TOM方法在儿童中期及以后理解社会发展的效用的关键测试，并将为观察到患有自闭症患者的社会障碍提供洞察，他们在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进行测量和数据建模。这将是对心理理论、社会动机和社会能力之间关系在任何年龄段的第一次检验。将针对一个关键的年龄范围(11-15岁)，当青少年正在熟练地使用基本的TOM能力，但社会能力正在经历戏剧性的变化。通过测试这些青少年的临床相关措施，这项工作将为未来有关自闭症社会困难的工作提供新的假设。这个项目将实现一种复杂的分析方法，通过结构方程建模，可以将关键因素(TOM和动机)建模为潜在变量。以往的研究认为，较高的社会动机和较好的心理理论成绩都预示着较高的社会能力。这项工作将提供迄今为止关于社会动机作用的最有力的证据，更重要的是，将使检验心理理论和动机的影响是否在统计学上是独一无二的或相关的成为可能。一个重要的可能性是，更有社会动机的人会更有效地使用他们的心理理论，因此也更有社交能力。这一点可以通过心理理论在社会动机对社会能力的影响中的中介作用得到证明。

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.