Chan JKY, Leung PWL. Common outcome, different pathways: Social information-processing deficits in autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. World J Psychiatry 2022; 12(2): 286-297 [PMID: 35317342 DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i2.286]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Patrick WL Leung, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, No. 3/F Sino Building, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong 999077, China. pleung@cuhk.edu.hk
Research Domain of This Article
Psychiatry
Article-Type of This Article
Minireviews
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Psychiatry. Feb 19, 2022; 12(2): 286-297 Published online Feb 19, 2022. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i2.286
Common outcome, different pathways: Social information-processing deficits in autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
Janice K Y Chan, Patrick W L Leung
Janice K Y Chan, Department of Clinical Psychology, United Christian Hospital, Hospital Authority, Hong Kong 999077, China
Patrick W L Leung, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China
Author contributions: Chan JKY and Leung PWL jointly conceptualized the themes and messages of this manuscript; Chan JKY conducted the literature search and provided the first draft; Leung PWL critically revised the manuscript; Chan JKY and Leung PWL jointly finalized the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict of interest associated with any of the authors who contributed their efforts in this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Patrick WL Leung, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, No. 3/F Sino Building, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong 999077, China. pleung@cuhk.edu.hk
Received: May 31, 2021 Peer-review started: May 31, 2021 First decision: July 14, 2021 Revised: July 29, 2021 Accepted: January 13, 2022 Article in press: January 13, 2022 Published online: February 19, 2022
Core Tip
Core Tip: Both autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show deficits in social information-processing, but their nature and origins are different. While both disorders exhibit a common outcome of social impairment, the exact pathways that each disorder traverses along the social information-processing steps are different. For ASD, there is a social knowledge/behaviour deficit arising from difficulties in social/emotional cue detection, encoding, and interpretation, which lead to problems in joining and initiating social interaction. For ADHD, there is a performance deficit incurred by disruption arising from the ADHD symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity. The inattentive, intrusive, and impulsive behaviours of ADHD unsettle social interaction.
