Social knowledge and social reasoning abilities in a neurotypical population and in children with Down syndrome

RESEARCH ARTICLE Social knowledge and social reasoning abilities in a neurotypical population and in children with Down syndrome Koviljka Barisnikov*☯, Fleur Lejeune☯ Child Clinical Neuropsychology Unit, FPSE, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Barisnikov K, Lejeune F (2018) Social knowledge and social reasoning abilities in a neurotypical population and in children with Down syndrome. PLoS ONE 13(7): e0200932. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200932 Editor: Giuseppe Curcio, University of L’Aquila, ITALY Received: December 12, 2017 Accepted: July 4, 2018 Published: July 20, 2018 Copyright: © 2018 Barisnikov, Lejeune. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Social knowledge refers to the ability to analyze and reason about social situations in relation to social rules which are essential to the development of social skills and social behavior. The present research aimed to assess these abilities with the “Social resolution task” in a neurotypical population of 351 children (4 to 12 years) and 39 young adults, and in 20 participants (10 to 18 years) with Down syndrome. Results showed that young children aged 4 to 6 were well able to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate social behavior but they had significantly more difficulties in judging and identifying social cues for the transgression of conventional rules than for moral ones. Between age 4 and 8, their social reasoning was mainly based on factual answers, while older children showed significantly more social awareness, making more reference to emotional and social consequences for the “victims”. The representation of a more universal applicability of social rules seemed to develop later in childhood, as of age 8. In contrast, participants with Down syndrome exhibited significantly more difficulties in judging, identifying and reasoning about transgression of social rules without social awareness. In conclusion, the results have shown that social reasoning abilities develop throughout childhood. Social awareness seems to have a long developmental course, which includes a sensibility about welfare and intersubjectivity, critical for the development of prosocial behavior. The clinical population with difficulties in social interaction and socio-emotional behavior could benefit from an early assessment and from learning social reasoning abilities to improve social skills. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper. Funding: This study was supported by grant No 100014-120657/1 from the Swiss National Science Foundation (http://www.snf.ch/en/Pages/default. aspx) awarded to the first author, KB. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Introduction Development of social skills depends largely on high order socio-cognitive abilities [1] including the ability to make inferences about other people’s intentions, emotions and thoughts. Social knowledge is one of the most important social competences and could be defined as the ability to analyze and reason about social situations in relation to social rules. This plays a crucial role in the understanding of how the social world is organized and regulated. The correct understanding and judgment of one’s own and others’ behavior influence the selection of the PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200932 July 20, 2018 1 / 17 Social reasoning abilities in a NT population and in children with DS behavioral response to a situation [2,3]. Developmental, clinical and social psychology in particular have taken a long-standing interest in studying social reasoning abilities and their relation to behavior [2,4]. For example, social reasoning has been linked to specific aspects of prosocial-oriented behavior (e.g. sharing, cooperation, empathy) allowing for successful interpersonal relationships [5,6]. Moreover, difficulties in social reasoning have been associated with internalizing and externalizing behavior, peer rejection [7–9] and more specifically with aggression and social anxiety [10]. This research will focus on the development of social reasoning in relation to social rule knowledge. The most widely accepted social domain theory suggests that social reasoning is broadly organised within moral/conventional rule distinction [11–13]. The transgression of moral rules is defined by its consequence for the right and welfare of others. Moral rules are contextfree and can be judged on “behavior action” as such [13]. In contrast, the transgression of conventional rules is authority- and context-dependent and is related to a violation of conventional proscriptions, such as consensus, rules and authority [13]. Moral transgressions are generally judged by neurotypical (NT) children as more serious and less permissible than conventional transgressions [4,14]. A recent neuroimaging study revealed the existence of a core set of regions that processes social rules in general comprising judgments of conventional and moral rules and that reflects valence-based decision-making [15]. However, judgments of the two types of social rules also involved differential responsiveness of cerebral areas, supporting the theoretical distinction between moral and conventional rules. Moreover, a behavioral study revealed that a lower capacity to differentiate moral and conventional rules was associated with proactive aggressive behavior in 4- to 6-year-old NT children [16]. These studies confirm the importance of this moral/conventional distinction when considering social reasoning abilities. The literature has reported that the ability to reason about moral and conventional rule transgressions develops from a young age into later childhood and adolescence. It has been documented that very young children in their first years of life react to the transgression of moral rules and are sensitive to someone else’s distress [17,18]. Studies have also provided evidence that 4- and 5-year-old children already understand basic moral rules related to equality, fairness and justice [13]. By age 5, children distinguish between different domains of social knowledge, which coincide with formal schooling [19]. A linear improvement in moral reasoning from 6 to 20 years was observed in NT children and adolescents [20]. The authors observed a significant group difference between childhood (6 to 8 years) and preadolescence (9 to 11 years) consistent with the rapid cerebral development during preadolescence in fronto-temporal circuits [21]. Another important grou (...truncated)