ABSTRACT

Autism Spectrum Disorder is characterized by difficulties in social communication and interaction alongside repetitive and stereotyped behaviors, interests, and activities. Results with the cognitive reflections test task revealed the autism group had reduced incorrect responses and greater correct responses compared to controls. Therefore, people with autism were more correct and showed less susceptibility to the typical reasoning biases which typically lead people to choose intuitive, but wrong, answers. The dual process theory of autism also proposes a relative bias toward deliberative processing, which may also provide an account of the strengths associated with autism in the literature such as pattern recognition and attention to detail. The dual process theory of autism proposes that deficits in engaging in intuitive processing result in decreased application of social heuristics. This may relate to a perceived lack of agreeableness, which has been found to correlate with empathizing.