Social motivation and implicit theory of mind in children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

According to the social motivation theory of autism, children who develop Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have early deficits in social motivation, which is expressed by decreased attention to social information. These deficits are said to lead to impaired socio-cognitive development, such as theory of mind (ToM). There is little research focused on the relation between social motivation and ToM in this population. The goal of the present study was to investigate the link between one aspect of social motivation, social orienting, and ToM in preschoolers with ASD. It was expected that, in contrast to typically developing (TD) children, children with ASD would show impaired performance on tasks measuring social orienting and ToM. It was also expected that children’s performance on the social orienting tasks would be correlated with their performance on the ToM task. A total of 17 children with ASD and 16 TD children participated in this study. Participants completed two social orienting tasks, a face preference task and a biological motion preference task, as well an implicit false belief task. Results reveal that TD children, but not children with ASD, exhibited social preference as measured by a preference for faces and biological motion. Furthermore, children with ASD tended to perform worse on the ToM task compared to their TD counterparts. Performance on the social motivation tasks and the ToM task tended to be related but only for the TD children. These findings suggest that ToM is multifaceted and that motivational deficits might have downstream effects even on implicit theory of mind.

Targeting PPARα in the rat valproic acid model of autism: focus on social motivational impairment and sex-related differences

“…FBR positive effects on social behavior could be related to the modulation of mesolimbic dopaminergic transmission [5,32], as blunted NAcS dopaminergic response to a natural reward is an index of motivational anhedonia and the rescued response is accompanied by restored motivation to operate for the reward [5,15,42]. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that social motivational deficits contribute to the impaired social behavior [3,8]. Hence, a rationale is suggested for early pharmacological interventions that facilitate motivational mechanisms targeting core social symptoms in male and female subjects.…”

“…This study aimed at challenging the social motivational theory of ASD that interprets the core social deficit of the disorder as an impairment of social rewardprocessing mechanisms that drive sociality [3,4,8]. In mammals, the dopaminergic projections from VTA to Fig.…”

“…Here, utilizing the validated environmental model of ASD induced by prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA) [7], we report the behavioral and neurochemical effects of FBR administered to rats from weaning (postnatal day 21, PND 21) to young adulthood (PND [48][49][50][51][52][53]. We focused on the developmental window between weaning and late adolescence since ASD children show early deficits in social motivation that during development lead to sociocognitive deficits [3,8], and adolescence is the critical period for the development of high-order cognitive functions [9]. The prevalence of ASD diagnosis in male subjects suggests sex-related phenotypic differences in the clinical presentation [10].…”

Augmented Interaction Systems for Supporting Autistic Children. Evolution of a Multichannel Expressive Tool: The SEMI Project Feasibility Study

“…Autism is characterized by deficits in social interaction, communication, and behavioral flexibility. Cognitive functioning in persons with autism, related to behavioral symptomatology, has been reported largely within the domains of theory of mind [14], executive functioning [15] and central [16]. So, there are several core underlying capabilities/deficits that coexist in ASD and that contribute to the pathogenesis of autism [17].…”

Figurative Language, Language Disorders, and Language(s) Evolution

“…ASD is a classic example. Although the problems that people with ASD have with figurative language have been explained in terms of either a cognitive deficit affecting the Theory of Mind (Happé, 1995 ), or a language deficit per se , particularly, in semantic competence (Norbury, 2004 ), we cannot ignore that mastering both abilities needs a rich social environment (see Syal and Finlay, 2011 ; Burnside et al, 2017 , and references therein). Following our line of evidence, our hypothesis is that these disparate deficits (problems with figurative language, with non-figurative language, and with socialization) result from the impairment of a common underlying biological mechanism that was remodeled during our recent evolutionary history.…”