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Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour

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 modu...

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Autores principales: Panasiti, Maria Serena, Puzzo, Ignazio, Chakrabarti, Bhismadev
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4949660/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26280134
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.1523
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author Panasiti, Maria Serena
Puzzo, Ignazio
Chakrabarti, Bhismadev
author_facet Panasiti, Maria Serena
Puzzo, Ignazio
Chakrabarti, Bhismadev
author_sort Panasiti, Maria Serena
collection PubMed
description 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
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spelling pubmed-49496602016-07-28 Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour Panasiti, Maria Serena Puzzo, Ignazio Chakrabarti, Bhismadev Autism Res Research Articles 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 John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015-08-17 2016-04 /pmc/articles/PMC4949660/ /pubmed/26280134 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.1523 Text en © 2015 The Authors Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Autism Research This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Panasiti, Maria Serena
Puzzo, Ignazio
Chakrabarti, Bhismadev
Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour
title Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour
title_full Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour
title_fullStr Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour
title_full_unstemmed Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour
title_short Autistic Traits Moderate the Impact of Reward Learning on Social Behaviour
title_sort autistic traits moderate the impact of reward learning on social behaviour
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4949660/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26280134
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.1523
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