Differences in causal reasoning in preschool-aged children with and without autism

The abilities to reason probabilistically and infer causality at a distance support social inferences and emerge early in neurotypical development. We examined these capacities in 3- to 5-year-olds with and without autism. In Experiment 1 (N = 100, 73% males, predominantly White), autistic children were unable to discriminate high- from low-probability causes until age 5, whereas neurotypical children succeeded by age 3. In Experiment 2 (N = 100, 71% males, predominantly White), autistic children inferred non-contact causality in physical events by age 3 and in social events by age 4, with exploratory data suggesting group differences. We conclude that early emerging differences in children's interpretation of socially relevant causal cues may partly contribute to the development of social differences in autism.