Autism's moral judgment gap explored

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Autism's moral judgment gap explored

Healy, Los Angeles Times

January 31, 2011, 4:17 p.m.

Imagine navigating a world of social situations in which you are a very poor

judge of other people's motivations and state of mind. It could seem like a very

random world indeed.

That is the world as seen through the eyes of someone with profound autism.

Without the capacity to infer or deduce correctly what other people know, and

why other people act as they do, one's sense of cause and effect is severely

impaired. When bad things happen, you can only assume it was the work of bad

people acting badly. That a person could innocently do harm by acting on a

mistaken belief would be difficult for you to understand.

Most humans develop this so-called theory of mind by the time they are 4 or 5

years old, and it helps shape our sense of moral judgment. While those with

autism may develop such social-reasoning skills late, some never develop them at

all. People with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder, such as Asperger's

syndrome, often manage to develop strategies that help them deduce other

people's states of mind and thus function in society. But a new study, published

in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that these people

still have trouble using theory of mind to make complex moral judgments.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recounted the

following story to 54 subjects (roughly half of them diagnosed with

high-functioning autism) and asked them to rate the morality of the main actor:

A woman named Grace is touring a chemical plant with a friend and takes a break

to get her friend and herself coffee from a machine. At her friend's request,

she adds white powder from a bowl labeled " sugar " to the friend's coffee. The

white powder is actually a deadly material left there by a scientist at the

plant, and the friend dies after drinking it.

People without autism -- at least those older than 5 -- typically do not judge a

person's behavior immoral if the person has acted with good intentions but on

the basis of bad information. But subjects with high-functioning autism were far

more likely than their " neurotypical " peers to judge Grace harshly in this

instance.

In a story of " attempted harm, " Dan gives a visitor a tour of a laboratory where

toxic substances must be sealed behind glass to protect visitors. Dan thinks the

sealing device is broken, and lets the visitor enter the lab anyway. But because

a repairman has, in fact, repaired the device, the visitor is unharmed.

In this case, neurotypicals are likely to judge Dan harshly because he sent a

visitor into danger having every reason to believe the visitor would be harmed.

But those with autism were more likely to look at the outcome of the story --

nobody was hurt -- and hold Dan blameless.

The researchers, led by ph M. Moran, say that the right temporoparietal

junction of the brain -- an area close to the back of the head, where the

temporal and parietal lobes meet -- has been found to " light up " when a person

is making complex assignments of moral blame. Future studies, they suggest,

should look at whether autism may involve some defect in the operation of this

specialized area.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times