Similar or opposite? Differences in the recognition of communicative intentions from biological motion in adults with autism and schizophrenia.

This study looked at how people with autism and schizophrenia understand social cues from body movements shown as dot displays. Both groups had more difficulty than typical people in understanding when two figures were communicating. People with schizophrenia had more problems overall, including recognizing emotions from movement. People with autism performed better than those with schizophrenia but still had some challenges.

This suggests these conditions may affect social understanding in different ways.

This comparative study examined how adults with autism (n=29) and schizophrenia (n=58) recognize communicative intentions from biological motion displays compared to neurotypical controls (n=29). Participants completed point-light display tasks assessing single-agent and dyadic communicative cues, plus emotion recognition. Both clinical groups showed impairments in recognizing dyadic communicative intentions, with the schizophrenia group performing worse than the autism group. In single-agent tasks, only the schizophrenia group had accuracy deficits, though both groups struggled with verbal descriptions.

Emotion recognition from biological motion was impaired only in schizophrenia. The schizophrenia group also showed greater deficits across neurocognitive and social cognitive measures, suggesting potentially different underlying mechanisms for social communication difficulties in these conditions.

Results suggest autism and schizophrenia may involve different mechanisms underlying social cognitive difficulties. Biological motion-based assessments could help differentiate between these conditions and inform targeted interventions. The preserved emotion recognition in autism versus schizophrenia may have diagnostic and therapeutic implications.

Cross-sectional design prevents causal inferences. Sample sizes are relatively small, particularly for the autism group. Study type is not specified. No information provided about participant characteristics, medication status, or severity measures. Limited generalizability due to specific biological motion paradigm.

Potential similarities between autism and schizophrenia have been studied for decades, with overlap within various social cognitive (SC) domains including mentalizing and emotion recognition difficulties. However, no direct comparison of low-level communicative intention recognition is available to date. To address this gap, we compared individuals with autism (ASD; N = 29), schizophrenia (SCZ; N = 58) and a non-clinical control group (NCC; N = 29) on their ability to recognize communicative intentions from biological motion (BM). Participants completed two BM tasks assessing communicative cues recognition with either single or dyadic point-light displays (PLDs) and one BM emotion recognition task.

Additionally, two batteries of neurocognitive and SC functioning were administered. Both clinical groups scored lower than NCC in the dyadic task, with the SCZ group also performing lower than the ASD group (SCZ < ASD < NCC). Although accuracy in the categorization of single-agent actions was only decreased in SCZ participants (SCZ < ASD, NCC), accuracy of freely-generated descriptions in this task was lower in both clinical groups compared to NCC, with no significant difference between ASD and SCZ (ASD, SCZ < NCC). Finally, only the SCZ group scored lower than NCC in emotion recognition from BM.

The SCZ group also scored lower than the ASD group on the majority of neurocognitive and SC measures. The obtained results confirm that both schizophrenia and autism might be associated with difficulties in low-level intention recognition based on BM stimuli, although these deficits were generally more prominent in the SCZ group, with exception of a Gestures subtask that required freely-generated verbal responses. Obtained results suggest the existence of potentially diverging mechanisms of SC alterations in autism and schizophrenia. Thus, including sensitive, BM-based measures of communicative intention recognition into research practice may help to address this issue.