ERIC Number: EJ1234319
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Dec
Pages: 8
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0162-3257
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Brief Report: Young Children with Autism Can Generate Intent-Based Moral Judgments
Margoni, Francesco; Guglielmetti, Giulia; Surian, Luca
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, v49 n12 p5078-5085 Dec 2019
Past research suggested that, due to difficulties in mentalistic reasoning, individuals with autism tend to base their moral judgments on the outcome of agents' actions rather than on agents' intentions. In a novel task, aimed at reducing the processing demands required to represent intentions and generate a judgment, autistic children were presented with agents that accidentally harmed or attempted but failed to harm others and were asked to judge those agents. Most of the times, children blamed the character who attempted to harm and exculpated the accidental wrongdoer, suggesting that they generated intent-based moral judgments. These findings suggest that processing limitations rather than lack of conceptual competence explain the poor performance reported in previous research on moral judgment in autism.
Descriptors: Moral Values, Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Decision Making, Cognitive Ability, Intention, Task Analysis, Antisocial Behavior, Accidents, Cognitive Processes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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