Supporting data for "Multidimensional Explorations of Social Functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Role of Social Motivation, Theory of Mind, and Social Camouflaging in Shaping Friendship Quality"

<p dir="ltr">This is a set of supporting data for the PhD thesis titled "Multidimensional Explorations of Social Functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Role of Social Motivation, Theory of Mind, and Social Camouflaging in Shaping Friendship Quality". The datasets include Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3 (all sharing the same participant sample: 104 autistic individuals and 192 non-autistic peers), along with relevant questionnaires and qualitative open-ended questions responses records.</p><p><br></p><p dir="ltr">Study 1 adopts a mixed-methods design to compare social motivation in autistic adolescents/young adults (aged 14-23 years) and non-autistic peers (aged 14-24 years). It incorporates implicit and explicit measurements: the Dynamic Visual Preference (DVP) eye-tracking task to assess social orientation, the Choose-A-Movie (CAM) behavioral paradigm to evaluate social seeking, self-report via the Friendship Motivation Scale (FMS) to measure friendship motivation dimensions, caregiver-report via the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) social motivation sub-scale to assess perceived social motivation, and open-ended qualitative questions to explore subjective friendship experiences.</p><p dir="ltr">Study 2 employs multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the relationships between Theory of Mind (ToM), social skills, problem behaviors, and friendship quality in the same sample. Measurements include two ToM tasks (Strange Stories Task and Five Advanced ToM Tasks) to assess mental state inferencing ability, the Social Skills Improvement System-Rating Scales (SSIS-RS) to evaluate social skills and problem behaviors, and the Friendship Qualities Scale (FQS) to measure five dimensions of friendship quality (companionship, help, security, closeness, conflict).</p><p dir="ltr">Study 3 applies multi-group SEM to explore the associations between friendship motivation (conceptualized via Self-Determination Theory), social camouflaging components, and social skills in the same sample. It uses the Friendship Motivation Scale (FMS) to assess autonomous and controlled friendship motivation, the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q) to measure three camouflaging strategies (compensation, masking, assimilation), and the SSIS-RS to evaluate social skills.</p>