An evaluation of 11 tests of social skills has identified 8 that give credible results in autistic adults1.
People with autism often have trouble with social skills, including with perceiving and interpreting social information. However, training programs for these skills are difficult to evaluate because there is no standard way to measure improvement in autistic adults. Not a single test of social cognition has been validated for use in adults with autism.
The researchers administered 11 such tests to 103 autistic adults and 95 controls. The tests cover four aspects of social cognition: the ability to read emotions in faces and voices; to understand social rules and interpret social cues; to infer others’ thoughts and emotions (theory of mind); and to explain social situations. Participants also took an intelligence quotient (IQ) test.
