Autism is a neurobiological disorder that is characterized by deficits in social interaction, impairments in communication and language, restricted/repetitive behaviors and/or interests. Lack of responsivity to social emotional cues or reciprocal engagement is commonly seen as a main characteristic of individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Lots of researches find that children with autism have deficits in the theory of mind (ToM) and empathy. Moral judgment, the ability to judge one’s own and others’ behavior as right or wrong, is considered to be closely related to ToM. In addition, empathy is typically considered as a necessary component of developing moral agents. Moral judgment, as an important aspect of social functioning, has rarely been studied in research on autism. On the other hand, children’s abstract moral reasoning about agents in hypothetical stories is closely related to their daily pro-social behavior. Do children with high-functioning autism (HFA) judge other’s morality correctly? Do they exhibit different moral behavior towards people they judge as morally nice versus those they judge as morally naughty?

Thirty-eight children with high-functioning autism aged between 6 to 12 years were recruited. As only 31 of the 38 HFA children completed the prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG), 31 TD children were also recruited, who were matched to the HFA children based on their age and gender. There was no significant difference between the two groups of children in terms of IQ. We tested children with HFA on both antisocial and pro-social acts to determine whether they could make both kinds of moral judgments correctly compared to typically developing (TD) children. After making moral judgments properly, participants were asked to interact with protagonists, whom they judged as either nice or naughty before, in the ten rounds of prisoner’s dilemma game. This study found that both HFA children and TD ones could make correct moral judgments, and HFA children might have even more rigid criteria for what constitutes a’ naughty’ act than TD ones. HFA children’s cooperation was similar when they played with partners of different moralities, while TD children showed higher cooperation when they played with a morally nice child than that when they interacted with a naughty child. Therefore, HFA children’s cooperation was not influenced by partner’s morality, while TD children’s cooperation might be prompted by partner’s nice morality. This study thus gives an important insight into high-functioning autistic children’s moral judgment and moral behavior.

This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31300859 and 30970911), the Scientific Foundation of Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y2CQ022005), 973 Program (No.2010CB8339004) and Chinese Academy of Sciences project (KJZD-EW-L04).