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This paper adds to the growing research on moral judgment (MJ) by considering whether theory of mind (ToM) might foster children’s autonomous MJ achievement. A group of 30 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was compared in MJ and ToM with 30 typically developing (TD) children. Participants were tested for MJ with a classical Piaget’s task and for ToM with a second order False Belief task. In the moral task, children were told two versions of a story: in one version the protagonist acted according to a moral intention but the action resulted in a harmful consequence; in the other version the protagonist acted according to an immoral intention, but the action resulted in a harmless consequence. Children were asked which of the two protagonists was the “naughtier.” In line with previous studies, the results indicated that, while the majority of TD participants succeeded in the second order False Belief task, only few individuals with ASD showed intact perspective taking abilities. The analysis of the MJ in relation to ToM showed that children with ASD lacking ToM abilities judged guilty the protagonists of the two versions of the story in the moral task because both of them violated a moral rule or because they considered the consequences of the actions, ignoring any psychological information. These results indicate a heteronomous morality in individuals with ASD, based on the respect of learned moral rules and outcomes rather than others’ subjective states.
The psychological roots of morality have been one of the major focuses of attention of philosophy for centuries. More recently, experimental psychologists empirically investigated moral reasoning in children and adults in the attempt to appreciate the impact of this process on individuals’ social lives.
Subsequent research on children confirmed the role of perspective taking in moral reasoning. The majority of children tend to consider intentional behaviors “wrong” compared to the accidental ones (
A number of research on TD adults and children indicated the role of perspective taking in moral reasoning. However, as long as perspective taking precedes the development of moral judgment (MJ) in childhood, it is difficult to identify the actual weight of ToM on morality.
Recently, studies of morality in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) provided important insights into the role of ToM abilities in MJ. Given the mentalizing impairments that characterize individuals with ASD (
Recently,
These studies on MJ in ASD has focused on the ability to distinguish between intentional moral and conventional harms (
Other studies applied more complex moral reasoning paradigms, which varied the intentionality of immoral acts requiring participants to involve ToM abilities to make MJ.
In summary, previous studies showed that individuals with ASD are able to perform at the same level as TD individuals in basic moral reasoning despite a lack of ToM (
Other studies revealed differences in moral reasoning between individuals with TD and individuals with ASD when more complex moral reasoning paradigms were applied that put higher demands on reasoning (
The results of the empirical studies described so far are consistent with the recent philosophical conceptualization of morality in individuals with ASD.
Thus, nowadays philosophers converge in the hypothesis that individuals with ASD should not be considered fully mature moral agents (autonomous) because of their significant social impairment. On the contrary, these individuals express heteronomous MJ based on overlearned abstract knowledge about normative rules (
The only study so far, for the best of our knowledge, that tried to explain morality in individuals with ASD according to a developmental model of morality is
The present study tested the hypothesis of an heteronomous morality in individuals with ASD, in the light of the Piagetian model of moral development in children. Even though Piagetian framework of moral development has been challenged in the last decades, Piaget’s dilemmas might offer an ideal context to verify the hypothesis of a heteronomous MJ in children with ASD, because the answers could vary along intention, transgressions of a moral rule and consequences. To achieve this aim, we investigated ToM and MJ in children with ASD and in typically developing children. We predicted that, if individuals with ASD are heteronomous agents, they will consider more the consequences of the actions or the violations of the moral rule when solving Piaget’s dilemmas rather than the others’ intentions.
Two groups participated in the study. The first group included 30 TD school children (all males; average chronological age = 10 years and 6 months;
The participants were tested for mentalizing abilities with a second-order FB task (
Participants were tested individually in a quiet room of the school during a school day. For the FB and the moral judgment tasks, the participants were instructed to read the stories carefully and to imagine each hypothetical situation. The experimenter was available for explanation and support. The order of task presentation was counterbalanced between subjects.
In the second-order FB attribution task (
Moral judgment was assessed by telling children the following stories, in which two protagonists used the scissors without the supervision of an adult (transgression):
Margherita wants to play with the scissors when her mum is gone. As soon as she plays with the scissors she cut a little hole in her dress.
Lucia wants to please her mother with a little present. She decides to cut some flowers from a colored paper sheet and give them to her mum. While she’s doing her job, she cut a big hole in her dress.
In the first version of the story, the character intentionally acted unfairly but she caused an insubstantial material damage. In the other version, the character acted fairly but she caused a considerable material damage. The participants were asked to decide which of the two protagonists was naughtier and why. An experimenter, which was blind to the group from which the responses were drawn, judged the participants’ answers. The responses were coded as follows: intention – the child refers to the intention of the protagonist (e.g., “Margherita was the naughtier because she used the scissors just for fun); transgression of a moral rule (moral rules)- the child considers both protagonist as equally nasty (e.g., “Both children were naughty because they used the scissors without the supervision of an adult); consequence – the child refers to the consequence of the action (e.g., “Lucia was the naughtier because she made a bigger hole in her dress compared to Margherita”). While the answers using the intentions indicate the autonomous stage, the other two categories indicate an heteronomous stage.
A series of non-parametric analysis were applied to compared ASD children and TD children in MJ and ToM. Chi-square was used to compare group differences in ToM and MJ in the general sample. Moreover, chi-square was used to compare group differences in MJ in two subgroups of participants, with and without ToM abilities. Finally, Fisher’s exact test was applied to compared the frequency of participants that expressed heteronomous vs. autonomous MJ in the participants with and without ToM abilities.
The results indicated that, while half of the TD participants succeeded in the second-order FB task (50%), only a few children with ASD (5%) showed intact perspective-taking abilities (χ2 = 7.5; df = 1;
As shown in
Then, we considered the MJ in children with TD and ASD divided into two subgroups of participants, with and without ToM abilities. In the subgroup of participants that failed the False-Belief Task (
In order to identify the heteronomous participants, we collapsed in a unique group the participants that considered the consequences and the transgression of the moral rules in the MJ and we compared them to the autonomous participants, who considered the intentions (
Frequencies of participants with autism spectrum disorder that failed the theory of mind task (ASD ToM-) and typical development that failed the theory of mind task (TD ToM-) that showed heteronomous or autonomous MJ.
Heteronomous | Autonomous | |
---|---|---|
TD ToM - ( |
8 | 7 |
ASD ToM - ( |
21 | 4 |
When we considered the participants that passed the ToM task (
As shown in
Frequencies of participants with autism spectrum disorder that succeeded in the theory of mind task (ASD ToM+) and with typical development that succeeded in the theory of mind task (TD ToM+) that showed heteronomous or autonomous MJ.
Heteronomous | Autonomous | |
---|---|---|
TD ToM + ( |
4 | 11 |
ASD ToM + ( |
3 | 2 |
In line with previous studies, our results indicated that children with ASD develop a MJ, despite their deficit in ToM. However, children with ASD who lacked ToM abilities showed more negative MJ concerning actions that broke the rules of morally appropriate behavior or regarding damaging outcomes. Reduced ToM abilities in children with ASD seem to enhance their likelihood to conform rigidly to a social norm or to consider the outcomes of an action, which is typical of a heteronomous stage of moral development in the Piagetian model. Thus, the results of our study confirm our hypothesis of a heteronomous morality in individuals with ASD. Our results are also consistent with a recent philosophical conceptualization of morality in individuals with ASD. As described in the introduction, philosophers nowadays agree that individuals with ASD should not be considered fully mature moral agents due to their social deficits (
A possible explanation for these results might be that individuals with ASD reach the heteronomous stage of moral development thanks to their experiences, which promotes the learning of moral rules developed by other people, but fail to advance to the autonomous stage due to their ToM deficits. Similar to the morally heteronomous TD children, children with ASD seem to have an immature sense of morality, so they view moral rules as unchangeable and requiring strict obedience. According to the Piaget’s model of moral development, the developmental transition from a heteronomous morality to an autonomous one might be promoted by the metarepresentational ability to consider others’ viewpoints (
A possible alternative explanation for our results might be that executive functions (EFs) also play a key role in moral judgement, considering the atypical inflexibility in morality expressed by individuals with ASD. Indeed, EFs have been shown to be impaired in young individuals with ASD and ToM deficits but not in the TD control group in whom the two abilities were found to be independent (
This study has some limitations that need to be acknowledged. First, participants were asked to read the second order false belief vignette, which is a rather complex story, so that participants may fail this task just by a lack of motivation or basic understanding. However, as we explained in the procedure, the second-order FB question was administered only if the child passed a memory question and a reality question. These questions allowed to control for possible intervening effects of a lack of motivation or basic understanding in the participants performance (
A second limitation of our study might be that we used only one task to assess perspective taking. Since the use of only one task has been identified as a methodological limit in previous studies on ToM (see for example,
The results from the present study lead to the need of important intervention strategies which might help individuals with ASD understand and reason about social interactions in an effective way. Rather than simply teach the “immorality” of an action, new programs should teach the mentalistic principles upon which moral rules are based, and stress the psychological motives of the behavior. It might be of interest, in a future study, to investigate the effect of a training in ToM abilities on autonomous MJ in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
RF contributed to the conception and design of this work. She collected, analyzed and interpreted the data. She wrote the manuscript. MP made the conception and design of this work. She contributed to the analysis and interpretation of the results. LF, GS, MF, and AS contributed to data collection, to the analysis and interpretation of the results. GD contributed to the conception and design of this work and to the interpretation of the data. All the authors reviewed the final version of the manuscript and approved it for publication.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.