自闭症个体道德推理的心理机制及其脑机制

Psychological and Brain Mechanisms of Moral Reasoning for Individuals With Autism

社交障碍是自闭症个体主要的临床症状之一,对他们的道德推理状况进行研究有助于我们解释这一现象.研究表明,自闭症个体在进行道德推理时和常人之间有所不同,而道德推理任务中经常包含有心理理解和移情方面的信息,提示我们自闭症个体的心理推理和移情能力可能是影响他们道德推理的内在心理机制.自闭症个体能够区分道德违背和习俗违背,但是他们经常判断不是故意造成的伤害是有意的.他们对伤害者的情绪线索也不太敏感,不能理解他人的感受,这种移情能力和道德推理能力之间的表现是相关的.此外,自闭症个体对道德推理的解释和言语发展水平之间也存在关联,他们经常通过重复故事情节、引述具体后果来解释道德推理,而缺乏对抽象道德规则的描述.脑成像研究表明,自闭症个体进行道德推理时在眶额叶皮质、杏仁核、脑岛、额下回、前扣带回、内侧前额叶皮质、默认网络模式、右颞顶联合区等部位的激活程度与常人存在着显著差异,这些部位同时也是心理理论或移情能力的重要脑区.自闭症个体在句子加工任务中言语功能联合区的激活程度也与常人存在差异,这可能是他们在对道德推理进行解释时存在困难的内部原因.未来研究需要考察心理理论、移情和言语能力对自闭症道德推理的交互作用,并采取非言语的方式对自闭症个体的道德推理进行研究,同时可通过脑损伤技术和激素水平的分析对影响他们道德推理的生理机制进行更加全面的考察.

Deficits in communication are one of the main symptoms for individuals with autism, and studying their mode of moral reasoning might help us explain this phenomenon. Previous research has shown differences in moral reasoning between individuals with autism and normal individuals. For example, people with autism could distinguish moral violation from conventional violation, but they often judged those actors who hurt others without intention deliberately. On the other hand, they were not sensitive to the victim＇s emotional cues and could not understand what others felt. Such studies suggest that the ability to mind-read and to show empathy with others might be some of the key psychological mechanisms required to complete moral reasoning tasks. Furthermore, other research suggests that there is a relationship between the moral reasoning and language development of individuals with autism. People with autism often explain their moral reasoning by repeating story details and declaring concrete outcomes, but their explanations lack descriptions of abstract moral rules. Brain imaging studies show that there are significant differences between people with autism and typically-developing individuals in the activation in the orbito-frontal cortex （OFC） , amygdala, insula, inferior frontal gyrus（IFG）, anterior cingulate cortex（ACC）, medial prefrontal cortex（mPFC）, default-mode network（DMN） and right temporo-parietal junction（RTPJ） in moral reasoning. These locations are also vital brain regions for theory of mind or empathy. Further studies have shown that when completing sentence processing tasks, people with autism also showed different activation in the verbal functional association areas by contrast with normal individuals, and this might be the internal basis for their explanation mode of moral reasoning. Future research should consider the interaction of the influence of theory of mind, empathy and verbal ability in moral reasoning for individuals with autism, and adopt more non-verbal methods. In addition, future studies could incorporate brain damage technology and hormone level analysis to examine the physiological mechanism of moral reasoning for people with autism comprehensively.