When do children with autism develop adequate social behaviour? Cross-sectional analysis of developmental trajectories

The ability to process social information is part of the social cognition construct and it includes the ability to select the appropriate social responses. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show difficulties in these competences that could compromise the development of adequate social behaviour. The aim of the study was to examine the development of the ability to process social cues across the Social Information Processing Interview (SIP-I) conducted with 38 children with ASD compared with 39 children with typical development using cross-sectional developmental trajectory analysis. Children with ASD showed slower development of complex abilities according to the SIP-I measures, particularly for the response construction component. This component evaluates the capacity of a child to put himself/herself in the shoes of other people and try to explain how he/she would act in the same situation. Slower development of this competence could explain the difficulty encountered by children with ASD in interacting with their peers and making an adequate behavioural response.