Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour

Abstract

A deficit in empathy has been suggested to underlie social behavioural atypicalities in autism. A parallel theoretical account proposes that reduced social motivation (i.e., low responsivity to social rewards) can account for the said atypicalities. Recent evidence suggests that autistic traits modulate the link between reward and proxy metrics related to empathy. Using an evaluative conditioning paradigm to associate high and low rewards with faces, a previous study has shown that individuals high in autistic traits show reduced spontaneous facial mimicry of faces associated with high vs. low reward. This observation raises the possibility that autistic traits modulate the magnitude of evaluative conditioning. To test this, we investigated (a) if autistic traits could modulate the ability to implicitly associate a reward value to a social stimulus (reward learning/conditioning, using the Implicit Association Task, IAT); (b) if the learned association could modulate participants’ prosocial behaviour (i.e., social reciprocity, measured using the cyberball task); (c) if the strength of this modulation was influenced by autistic traits. In 43 neurotypical participants, we found that autistic traits moderated the relationship of social reward learning on prosocial behaviour but not reward learning itself. This evidence suggests that while autistic traits do not directly influence social reward learning, they modulate the relationship of social rewards with prosocial behaviour. Autism Res 2016, 9: 471–479. © 2015 The Authors Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Autism Research

The Mimicry Among Us: Intra- and Inter-Personal Mechanisms of Spontaneous Mimicry

“…Crucially, this reward-dependent modulation of spontaneous smile mimicry was inversely related to autistic traits (i.e., individuals high in autistic traits showed little facilitation of spontaneous mimicry for high versus low rewarding faces). An extension of these findings, using the same evaluative conditioning paradigm, showed that autistic traits did not moderate the extent of (implicit) conditioning (as measured by an implicit association test), but did reduce subsequent prosocial behavior toward the conditioned high-reward identities (Panasiti et al 2016). This is especially interesting in the context of previous reports linking mimicry and prosocial behavior (van Baaren et al 2004).…”

Perceived warmth and competence of others shape voluntary deceptive behaviour in a morally relevant setting

“…As expected, participants made fewer egoistic lies to high than low‐warmth individuals, supporting the idea that moral information is of primary importance in guiding social judgements and interpersonal behaviour (Brambilla, Rusconi, Sacchi, & Cherubini, ; Delgado et al ., ; Liuzza, Candidi, Sforza, & Aglioti, ; Mancini, Betti, Panasiti, Pavone, & Aglioti, ; Panasiti, Puzzo, & Chakrabarti, ; Willis & Todorov, ; Wojciszke et al ., ). These results expand previous evidence that people tend to trust (Delgado et al ., ) and cooperate (Steinel & De Dreu, ) more with warm individuals, by showing that inferred warmth reduces the tendency to deceive others.…”

Inter-trial coherence of medial frontal theta oscillations linked to differential feedback processing in youth and young adults with autism

“…These include abnormal behavioral responses when processing social stimuli (Sepeta et al, 2012; Yeung, Han, Sze, & Chan, 2014), such as atypical activation of reward circuitry during the anticipation and processing of monetary incentives and social cues (Dichter et al, 2012; Ingersoll, Schreibman, & Tran, 2003; Panasiti, Puzzo, & Chakrabarti, 2015; Rademacher, Schulte-Ruther, Hanewald, & Lammertz, 2016). Studies using a variety of methods suggest that ASD is characterized, in part, by atypical engagement of frontal and striatal systems (Glerean et al, 2016; Langen et al, 2014).…”