Mind-reading in adolescents and adults with a pervasive

214 Pages·2004·0.98 MB·English

Mind-reading in adolescents and adults
with a pervasive developmental disorder

Koen Ponnet

Promotor: Prof. Dr. Herbert Roeyers
Copromotor: Prof. Dr. Ann Buysse

Proefschrift ingediend tot het behalen van de academische graad
van Doctor in de Psychologische Wetenschappen

2004

“Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo.”

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

Chapter 2 Advanced mind-reading in adults with Asperger 17
syndrome

Chapter 3 Empathic accuracy in adults with a pervasive 43
developmental disorder during an unstructured
conversation with a typically developing stranger

Chapter 4 Empathic accuracy in young adults with PDD: 81
Does structure matter ?

Chapter 5 Perceived and performed mind-reading in adults 113
with a pervasive developmental disorder

Chapter 6 Schematic knowledge and levels of processing 137
in young adults with PDD

Chapter 7 Alternative explanations to the empathic accuracy 163
findings

Chapter 8 General discussion 191

Acknowledgements

It was a fascinating and absorbing experience to realize this thesis. Obviously,
the process of creating this work was greatly facilitated by the help and support of
many people. It is my pleasure to acknowledge each of them.
First of all, I would like to thank all adolescents and adults with PDD, and their
parents, who were willing to participate in the studies and have taught me so
much.
My special gratitude goes to my supervisors Prof. Dr. Herbert Roeyers and
Prof. Dr. Ann Buysse, who accompanied me from the very beginning of this
journey, and all the way through to its completion. They were always willing to
give me suggestions, comments, opinions and recommendations, and -as such-
have helped steer the course of my research into exciting directions. In addition,
their perspective was invaluable in helping me figure out how to separate the vital
wheat from the expendable chaff. Thank you Herbert and Ann.
I am very indebted to Prof. Dr. Armand De Clercq, thanks to whom the
empathic accuracy design was digitised. Of course, I also appreciate the various
distracting chats in his office. Furthermore, I would like to express my true
appreciation to Prof. Dr. Ivan Mervielde and Prof. Dr. Geert Van Hove, for their
advice and comments on my research work, and to Prof. Dr. Paulette Van Oost,
for being -in a way- the shepherd of our department.
I also want to express my appreciation to all colleagues, especially the members
of Herbert’s team, for their interest, enthusiasm and collegiality. Special thanks go
out to Yolande D., Annick V. and Wouter B., for their sense of humour. In
addition, I want to thank Ruth R., for her most appreciated skills as graphic
designer; Kim D. and Olivier P., for the several discussions we had; and Stefaan
V., for the proofreading and his down-to-earthness that really made me more
relaxed. As a coffee-addict, I want to apologize to my Einde Were colleagues for
the distress they suffered from the good (but sometimes too strong) coffee that I
made.
Over the years, many authors and clinicians have enriched my own thinking
and learned me more about autism, empathy, male/female relationships, normal
and so-called abnormal thinking, and so on. I would like to thank them all. I am
also indebted to several undergraduate students for their help in data collection.
I have a few words to say about some people who helped keep me reasonably
sane during the writing of this thesis. First and foremost, I want to thank my
mother and father, brother and sisters, and -of course- their partners, for their
continuous support and encouragement. Second, I want to thank my
‘experimental’ friends for the glorious moments on the badminton court and the
several amusing incidents out of it. Third, I want to thank all my friends,
especially Frederik D. and Katelijne V., who never fail to give support and offer
full scope to me to broaden my horizon.
Finally, I want to thank Véronique. She endured my hours at the office and my
-from time to time dreadful- restlessness. She helped me with the final editing, and
saw me through an exhilarating but demanding period of my life.

Koen Ponnet

January 2004
1

CHAPTER

Introduction
2 Chapter 1
PERVASIVE DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS
People with a pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) experience profound
impairments in reciprocal social interaction, communication and imagination, and
show restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests and
activities (APA, 1994, 2000; Wing, 1988). According to the DSM-IV-TR (APA,
2000), Pervasive Developmental Disorders encompasses Autistic Disorder, Rett’s
Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder, and Pervasive
Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), including atypical
autism.
Besides this categorical division, there is also an assumption that autism is just
one part of a spectrum of disorders that encompasses other variants such as atypical
autism, PDD-NOS and Asperger syndrome (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner,
Martin, & Clubley, 2001; Bolton et al., 1994; Szatmari, 2003). According to this
view, the spectrum ranges from ‘classic’ Kanner-type autism at one end of the
spectrum to high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome at the other (Parsons
& Mitchell, 2002). Although the concept of a spectrum captures well the
behavioural variability that is a central feature of autism and its related
developmental disorders (Lawson, 2003), a debate remains about the validity and
usefulness of a spectrum view (Ozonoff & McMahon-Griffith, 2000; Volkmar &
Klin, 2000). In the present thesis, we will therefore use the general term ‘pervasive
developmental disorder’ or ‘PDD’.
THEORY OF MIND
The past two decades, several psychological accounts have emerged as potential
explanations of the various aspects of PDD, such as the theory of mind hypothesis,
executive dysfunction, weak central coherence and others (Rapin, 1997). However,
it is a characteristic of each existing account that it only explains a specific subset
of the overall features of PDD (Booth, Charlton, Hughes, & Happé, 2003; Jarrold,
Butler, Cottington, & Jimenez, 2000; Lawson, 2003; Rapin, 1997). While some