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Social cognition skills among females with fragile X

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Abstract

Emotion perception and perspective-taking skills were examined among women with or without the fragile X gene. The performance of 56 control women was compared to the performance of 46 women who were carriers of the fragile X gene. Twenty-seven of the carrier women had 0–1% cytogenetic expression and did not appear affected by the gene, whereas the remaining 19 women had ≥2% cytogenetic expression and did appear affected by the gene. The emotion perception task employed was one for which deficits have been reported among individuals with autism. The results show that performance on this emotion-perception test and the perspective-taking measure was significantly related to full-scale IQ scores, but not to fragile X group status when effects of IQ were removed. Thus the results do not support the hypothesis that perspective-taking or emotion perception deficits are a component of the fragile X phenotype in females and represent an important differentiation between fragile X and autism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Children's Hospital, CDU-B140, 1056 E. 19th Avenue, 80218, Denver, Colorado

    Michèle M. M. Mazzocco, Bruce F. Pennington & Randi J. Hagerman

  2. University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, USA

    Michèle M. M. Mazzocco & Randi J. Hagerman

Authors
  1. Michèle M. M. Mazzocco
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  2. Bruce F. Pennington
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  3. Randi J. Hagerman
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Additional information

This research was supported by NIMH Grant MCJOOO252 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of Maternal and Child Health; and by grant MH45916 U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIMH). Randi J. Hagerman and Michele M. M. Mazzocco received additional support from a grant from Joslins Department Store, Denver, Colorado. Hagerman received support from grant RR-69 from the General Clinical Research Program, National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health. Bruce F. Pennington was supported by an RSDA (MH0419) and MERIT award (MH38870) from NIMH, as well as by an NICHD Center Grant (HD27802). The authors thank all the women who participated in the study and Dennis Lucky and Barrett Jeffers from the Kempe Research Center at The Children's Hospital.

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Mazzocco, M.M.M., Pennington, B.F. & Hagerman, R.J. Social cognition skills among females with fragile X. J Autism Dev Disord 24, 473–485 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02172129

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