Social motivation in people with and without autism spectrum disorders

It is commonly observed that people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make fewer attempts to have social contact. A recent theory suggests that reduced motivation to have social interactions might be the root for social difficulties in ASD (Chevallier, Kohls, Troiani, Brodkin, & Schultz, 2012). There are currently few simple behavioural ways to test these claims. The aim of this research was 1) to develop a measure of social seeking component of social motivation that is simple enough to be used with a large population of people with ASD; and 2) to test if there is evidence of reduced social seeking in people with ASD. As the first part of this research, I developed and tested a simple behavioural paradigm “Choose-A-Movie” (CAM) that evaluates the effort participants make to view social vs non-social stimuli hence estimating the reward value of the stimuli. It was found that typical adults prefer to watch social stimuli more but they trade-off their stimuli preference for effort. In experiment 2 I used the same paradigm with adults with and without ASD and found that unlike typical adults people with ASD prefer non-social stimuli but they too trade-off their stimuli preference for effort. Having established the efficacy of the CAM paradigm in adults with and without ASD, in experiment 3 I explored CAM’s efficacy for younger participants. A comparison between adolescents with and without ASD on CAM showed that both groups prefer choice requiring less effort, and participants with ASD prefer non-social stimuli to social. However unlike typical adults, typical adolescents did not show a preference for social stimuli. Though these experiments supported the reduced social motivation theory of ASD, they raised questions about the development of social seeking in typical people. Therefore, in experiment 4 I tested participants between ages 4-20 years on CAM. The results showed that typical individuals undergo a decline in their social seeking tendencies during pre-adolescence. This highlights the need for developmental evaluation of social seeking in both ASD and non-ASD populations. Finally, in experiment 5 the CAM paradigm was compared with an Approach-avoidance (AA) task, a frequently used measure of social seeking (Aharon et al., 2001). The findings suggested that social preference could be elicited more strongly in typical adults using CAM paradigm. Furthermore the autistic traits of participants were a reliable predictor of social seeking on CAM but not on AA task. These results raise the question of whether different tools claiming to measure social seeking target the same behaviour. Overall, this research shows that social motivation can be quantified using a simple behavioural paradigm – CAM that targets social seeking component of it, and also that social motivation is reduced in people with ASD. At the same time this research raises important questions about 1) developmental changes in social seeking in typical people, and 2) if different tools of social seeking, measure the same underlying construct. It is important to explore these questions to have a better understanding of social seeking in people with ASD

Social motivation in people with and without autism spectrum disorders

It is commonly observed that people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make fewer attempts to have social contact. A recent theory suggests that reduced motivation to have social interactions might be the root for social difficulties in ASD (Chevallier, Kohls, Troiani, Brodkin, & Schultz, 2012). There are currently few simple behavioural ways to test these claims. The aim of this research was 1) to develop a measure of social seeking component of social motivation that is simple enough to be used with a large population of people with ASD; and 2) to test if there is evidence of reduced social seeking in people with ASD. As the first part of this research, I developed and tested a simple behavioural paradigm “Choose-A-Movie” (CAM) that evaluates the effort participants make to view social vs non-social stimuli hence estimating the reward value of the stimuli. It was found that typical adults prefer to watch social stimuli more but they trade-off their stimuli preference for effort. In experiment 2 I used the same paradigm with adults with and without ASD and found that unlike typical adults people with ASD prefer non-social stimuli but they too trade-off their stimuli preference for effort. Having established the efficacy of the CAM paradigm in adults with and without ASD, in experiment 3 I explored CAM’s efficacy for younger participants. A comparison between adolescents with and without ASD on CAM showed that both groups prefer choice requiring less effort, and participants with ASD prefer non-social stimuli to social. However unlike typical adults, typical adolescents did not show a preference for social stimuli. Though these experiments supported the reduced social motivation theory of ASD, they raised questions about the development of social seeking in typical people. Therefore, in experiment 4 I tested participants between ages 4-20 years on CAM. The results showed that typical individuals undergo a decline in their social seeking tendencies during pre-adolescence. This highlights the need for developmental evaluation of social seeking in both ASD and non-ASD populations. Finally, in experiment 5 the CAM paradigm was compared with an Approach-avoidance (AA) task, a frequently used measure of social seeking (Aharon et al., 2001). The findings suggested that social preference could be elicited more strongly in typical adults using CAM paradigm. Furthermore the autistic traits of participants were a reliable predictor of social seeking on CAM but not on AA task. These results raise the question of whether different tools claiming to measure social seeking target the same behaviour. Overall, this research shows that social motivation can be quantified using a simple behavioural paradigm – CAM that targets social seeking component of it, and also that social motivation is reduced in people with ASD. At the same time this research raises important questions about 1) developmental changes in social seeking in typical people, and 2) if different tools of social seeking, measure the same underlying construct. It is important to explore these questions to have a better understanding of social seeking in people with ASD

Social anxiety is more likely to influence reputation management decisions than autistic traits

People manage their social reputation by selectively sharing achievements, thereby shaping the way others think about them. Autistic traits and social anxiety may have opposing impacts on reputation management. This study aimed to identify the influence of autistic traits and social anxiety on reputation management behavior, independently and in co-occurrence with one another. Seventy-seven adults with varying levels of autistic and social anxiety traits completed a novel self-disclosure task that required them to complete a computerized game and decide whether to disclose their scores to another participant. This design provided a safe social environment for sharing performance outcomes and allowed us to manipulate performance outcomes for participants and set a perceived ‘norm’ of high self-disclosure. Results showed that participants were more likely to disclose their high than low scores to the other player. Social anxiety reliably predicted the likelihood of disclosing their scores while high autistic traits predicted the likelihood of disclosure only in combination with high social anxiety. Additionally, establishing the norm of high disclosure facilitated self-disclosure in all the participants. This study shows that social anxiety may influence reputation management via selective self-disclosure more when co-occurring with high autistic traits. People with varying levels of autistic traits may not behave differently to maintain a social reputation

Social seeking declines in young adolescents

The desire to engage with others is an important motivational force throughout our lifespan. It is known that social behaviour and preferences change from childhood to adulthood, but whether this change is linked with any changes in social motivation is not known. We evaluated 255 typically developing participants from ages 4–20 years on a behavioural paradigm ‘Choose a Movie’ (CAM). On every trial, participants had a choice between viewing social or non-social movies presented with different levels of effort (key presses/screen touch required). Hence, participants chose not only the movie they would watch but also how much effort they would make. The difference between the effort levels of the chosen and not chosen stimuli helps in quantifying the motivation to seek it. This task could be used with all the age groups with minimal adaptations, allowing comparison between the groups. Results showed that children (4–8 years), older adolescents (12–16 years) and young adults (17–20 years) made more effort to look at social movies. Counterintuitively, this preference was not seen in young adolescents (around 9–12 years), giving a U-shaped developmental trajectory over the population. We present the first evidence for non-monotonic developmental change in social motivation in typical participants

Social orienting and social seeking behaviors in ASD. A meta analytic investigation

Social motivation accounts of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) posit that individuals with ASD find social stimuli less rewarding than neurotypical (NT) individuals. Behaviorally, this is proposed to manifest in reduced social orienting (individuals with ASD direct less attention towards social stimuli) and reduced social seeking (individuals with ASD invest less effort to receive social stimuli). In two meta-analyses, involving data from over 6000 participants, we review the available behavioral studies that assess social orienting and social seeking behaviors in ASD. We found robust evidence for reduced social orienting in ASD, across a range of paradigms, demographic variables and stimulus contexts. The most robust predictor of this effect was interactive content - effects were larger when the stimulus involved an interaction between people. By contrast, the evidence for reduced social seeking indicated weaker evidence for group differences, observed only under specific experimental conditions. The insights gained from this meta-analysis can inform design of relevant task measures for social reward responsivity and promote directions for further study on the ASD phenotype

Distinct neural correlates of social and object reward seeking motivation

open access articleThe “Choose‐a‐Movie‐CAM” is an established task to quantify the motivation for seeking social rewards. It allows participants to directly assess both the stimulus value and the effort required to obtain it. In the present study, we aimed to identify the neural mechanisms of such cost‐benefit decision‐making. To this end, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging data were collected from 24 typical adults while they completed the CAM task. We partly replicated the results from our previous behavioural studies showing that typical adults prefer social over object stimuli and low effort over higher effort stimuli but found no interaction between the two. Results from neuroimaging data suggest that there are distinct neural correlates for social and object preferences. The precuneus and medial orbitofrontal cortex, two key areas involved in social processing are engaged when participants make a social choice. Areas of the ventral and dorsal stream pathways associated with object recognition are engaged when making an object choice. These activations can be seen during the decision phase even before the rewards have been consumed, indicating a transfer the hedonic properties of social stimuli to its cues. We also found that the left insula and bilateral clusters in the inferior occipital gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule were recruited for increasing effort investment. We discuss limitations and implications of this study which reveals the distinct neural correlates for social and object rewards, using a robust behavioural measure of social motivation

Comparison of choose-a-movie and approach-avoidance paradigms used to measure social motivation

Social motivation is a subjective state which is rather difficult to quantify. It has sometimes been conceptualised as “behavioural effort” to seek social contact. Two paradigms: approach–avoidance (AA) and choose a movie (CAM), based on the same conceptualisation, have been used to measure social motivation in people with and without autism. However, in absence of a direct comparison, it is hard to know which of these paradigms has higher sensitivity in estimating preference for social over non-social stimuli. Here we compare these two tasks for their utility in (1) evaluating social seeking in typical people and (2) identifying the influence of autistic traits on social motivation. Our results suggest that CAM reveals a clear preference for social stimuli over non-social in typical adults but AA fails to do so. Also, social seeking measured with CAM but not AA has a negative relationship between autistic traits

Brief report: a comparison of the preference for viewing social and non-social movies in typical and autistic adolescents

The recently proposed Social Motivation theory (Chevallier et al., Trends in cognitive sciences 16(4):231–239, 2012) suggests that social difficulties in Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) might be caused by a difference in the motivation to engage with other people. Here we compared adolescents with (N = 31) and without (N = 37) ASC on the Choose-a-Movie paradigm that measures the social seeking. The results showed a preference for viewing objects over smiling faces in ASC, which is in line with the theory of low social motivation. However, typical adolescents did not show any stimuli preferences, raising questions about developmental changes in social motivation. Age was found to play a significant role in moderating the choice behaviour of the participants. We discuss the implications of these findings in detail

Using mobile health technology to assess childhood autism in low-resource community settings in India: an innovation to address the detection gap

A diagnosis of autism typically depends on clinical assessments by highly-trained professionals. This high resource demand poses a challenge in low-resource settings. Digital assessment of neurodevelopmental symptoms by non-specialists provides a potential avenue to address this challenge. In this study, we provide the proof of principle for such a digital assessment, with a cross-sectional case control field study using mixed methods. We developed and tested an app, START, that can assess autism phenotypic domains (social, sensory, motor) through child performance and parent reports. N=131 children (2-7 years old; 48 autistic, 43 intellectually disabled, and 40 non-autistic typically developing) from low-resource settings in India were assessed using START in home settings by non-specialist health workers. The two groups of children with neurodevelopmental disorders manifested lower social preference, higher sensory sensitivity, and lower fine-motor accuracy compared to their typically developing counterparts. Machine-learning analysis combining all START-derived measures demonstrated 78% classification accuracy for the three groups. Qualitative analysis of the interviews with health workers and families of the participants demonstrated high acceptability and feasibility of the app. These results provide feasibility, acceptability, and proof of principle for START, and demonstrate the potential of a scalable, mobile tool for assessing neurodevelopmental conditions in low-resource settings

The Latent Structure of Autistic Traits:A Taxometric, Latent Class and Latent Profile Analysis of the Adult Autism Spectrum Quotient

Autistic traits are widely thought to operate along a continuum. A taxometric analysis of Adult Autism Spectrum Quotient data was conducted to test this assumption, finding little support but identifying a high severity taxon. To understand this further, latent class and latent profile models were estimated that indicated the presence of six distinct subtypes: one with little probability of endorsing any autistic traits, one engaging in ‘systemising’ behaviours, three groups endorsing multiple components of Wing and Gould’s autistic triad, and a group similar in size and profile to the taxon previously identified. These analyses suggest the AQ (and potentially by extension autistic traits) have a categorical structure. These findings have important implications for the analysis and interpretation of AQ data