Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study

This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. one author of this publication is identified as autistic in the project.

About the autistic author marker

Ferguson, H. J., Wimmer, L., Black, J., Barzy, M., & Williams, D. M. (2021). Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 52(1), 349-360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04939-4

Publication date: 11 Mar 2021 Added to AutiHub: 4 Oct 2026 Type: Article Article language: English

This publication is integrated into AutiHub through:

Authors

Publication authors
5
Publication authors identified as autistic
1 / 5 (20.0%)

Abstract

Abstract We report an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment that tests whether autistic adults are able to maintain and switch between counterfactual and factual worlds. Participants (N = 48) read scenarios that set up a factual or counterfactual scenario, then either maintained the counterfactual world or switched back to the factual world. When the context maintained the world, participants showed appropriate detection of the inconsistent critical word. In contrast, when participants had to switch from a counterfactual to factual world, they initially experienced interference from the counterfactual context, then favoured the factual interpretation of events. None of these effects were modulated by group, despite group-level impairments in Theory of Mind and cognitive flexibility among the autistic adults. These results demonstrate that autistic adults can appropriately use complex contextual cues to maintain and/or update mental representations of counterfactual and factual events.

Bibliography cited by this reference

Cited references are imported from external metadata sources when they are available. The list may be partial.

Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 18 Oct 2026 01:33.

Cited references
62
With a DOI
57
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
4
4 / 62 (6.5%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
3 / 62 (4.8%)
References with detected author names
61 / 62 (98.4%)
Without detected author names
1
Without a structured title
3
Without a stable identifier
4
References with raw author names still to review
1
References with external metadata lookup issues
0
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
165
From DOI or external metadata
165
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
1
43 / 165 (26.1%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 122 / 165 (73.9%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
4 / 165 (2.4%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 4 / 43 (9.3%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 1 / 128 (0.8%).
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