Transitive inference in a clinical childhood sample with a focus on autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

AbstractTransitive inference (TI) has a long history in the study of human development. There have, however, few pediatric studies that report clinical diagnoses have tested trial‐and‐error TI learning, in which participants infer item relations, rather than evaluate them explicitly from verbal descriptions. Children aged 8–10 underwent a battery of clinical assessments and received a range of diagnoses, potentially including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention‐deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), anxiety disorders (AD), specific learning disorders (SLD), and/or communication disorders (CD). Participants also performed a trial‐and‐error learning task that tested for TI. Response accuracy and reaction time were assessed using a statistical model that controlled for diagnostic comorbidity at the group level. Participants in all diagnostic categories showed evidence of TI. However, a model comparison analysis suggested that those diagnosed with ASD succeeded in a qualitatively different way, responding more slowly to each choice and improving faster across trials than their non‐ASD counterparts. Additionally, TI performance was not associated with IQ. Overall, our data suggest that superficially similar performance levels between ASD and non‐ASD participants may have resulted from a difference in the speed‐accuracy tradeoff made by each group. Our work provides a preliminary profile of the impact of various clinical diagnoses on TI performance in young children. Of these, an ASD diagnosis resulted in the largest difference in task strategy.