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guess this : Janet and her protagonist are kayak in a part of the ocean with many Portuguese man-of-war . Janet had read that the jellyfish are n’t dangerous , and say her friend it ’s alright to swim . Her friend is stick by a jellyfish and dies .
Who ’s to blame ?
researcher who used this scenario in a late field found that people with autism were more probable to blame Janet for her friend ’s death than people withoutautism . Most normally functioning people realize the death of Janet ’s friend was inadvertent , because Janet did n’t realize the man-of-war were poisonous , they sound out .
But people with autism may perceive ethics otherwise than normally functioning hoi polloi because they focus more on the outcomes of situations , rather than the intention of the people in thosesituations , said discipline researcher Liane Young , a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . The ability to distinguish between design and result is called " theory of judgment . "
The study " shows that some of the way in which we make moral judgments are root in the brainpower , in physical processes , " Young told MyHealthNewsDaily .
The study was published online today ( Jan. 31 ) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
The blame game
Young and her colleagues tested the theory of mind in 13 adult withautismand 13 normally functioning adult . They presented the people in the study with about 50 scenarios , including the jellyfish narrative .
Although normally operate multitude give many unlike responses when it hail to assign a " right " or a " legal injury " to the scenarios , one trend was clear : People with autismwere all more potential to blame someone involved in an accident than the ordinarily functioning citizenry , she said .
Moral judgment is a complex social cognitive process , but it is also influenced by moral education , Young say .
" We learn in schools and at domicile the value of pardon , for good example , to forgive and forget that so - and - so did n’t think to do such - and - such , " she said . " Of course , this acquisition may touch the learning ability , too . "
Painting a picture of the mind
Young conducted a similar discipline last class by pop the question the same scenarios to patients who had price to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex , the part of the brain responsible for for provision and conclusion - devising .
She obtain that these patients did not get upturned with people who had malicious intentions that did n’t go as planned . For example , they were not disordered with someone who taste to envenom another person with mushroom , but the mushrooms turned out to be benignant .
These two findings that people with autism havetrouble understandinginnocent intentions , and that multitude with a certain type of brain damage have trouble empathize malicious intentions help paint a photograph of how the brain processes ethical motive , Young said .
The researcher are now looking at whether multitude with autism have unorthodox body process in the mental capacity region on which the theory of mind gist . This research could avail give " a arrant understanding of the psychological and neural mechanism that are affect and unmoved in autism , " Young enjoin .
Pass it on : People with autism tend to pore on the outcomes of situations , rather than the intentions of the citizenry in the situation .
