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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Autism
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1500396
This article is part of the Research Topic Empowering Early Career Researchers in Psychiatry: Advancing Autism Research View all articles

Reading Between the Lines: Exploring the discriminative ability of the Short-Story Task in identifying autistic individuals within autism outpatient services

Provisionally accepted
Irina Jarvers Irina Jarvers 1*Monika Sommer Monika Sommer 2,3Manuela Ullmann Manuela Ullmann 2Verena Simmel Verena Simmel 2Lore Blaas Lore Blaas 2Stefanie Gorski Stefanie Gorski 2Saskia Krüger-Lassen Saskia Krüger-Lassen 2Matthias Vogel Matthias Vogel 2Berthold Langguth Berthold Langguth 2
  • 1 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
  • 2 Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg at the Bezirksklinikum Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
  • 3 Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Munich, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The correct diagnosis of autistic individuals is an everyday challenge within autism outpatient services. While the short-story task (SST), a task measuring fiction-based mentalizing, has demonstrated promise in differentiating between autistic and non-autistic adults, its discriminative ability has not been investigated in a sample of individuals seeking autism diagnostics at outpatient services. This study aimed to evaluate the utility of the SST in individuals seeking autism diagnostics between 2016 and 2022 at the Clinic and Polyclinic for Psychiatry & Psychotherapy of the University of Regensburg at medbo District Hospital Regensburg. The sample consisted of 211 individuals. In 100 of them an autism spectrum disorder has been diagnosed and 111 individuals were diagnosed with other conditions or none at all. Performance on the SST did not significantly differ between the two groups, and receiver operator curve analysis did not support the SST as a reliable discriminator. However, linear regression analyses revealed that autism diagnosis was the sole significant predictor of SST mentalizing performance. Additionally, specific items of the SST showed significant differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals and constituted a significant predictor of autism diagnosis. In summary, while the SST may not be robust enough to accurately identify autistic individuals on its own, it does offer clinicians valuable insights into how individuals interpret others' actions and whether they grasp the broader context of a story versus focusing solely on details.

    Keywords: short-story task, autism outpatient services, fiction-based mentalizing, diagnostics, Autism Spectrum

    Received: 23 Sep 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Jarvers, Sommer, Ullmann, Simmel, Blaas, Gorski, Krüger-Lassen, Vogel and Langguth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Irina Jarvers, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.