Enhanced social learning of threat in adults with autism

Abstract

Background Recent theories have linked autism to challenges in prediction learning and social cognition. It is unknown, however, how autism affects learning about threats from others “demonstrators” through observation, which contains predictive learning based on social information. The aims of this study are therefore to investigate social fear learning in individual with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and to examine whether typically developing social cognition is necessary for successful observational learning. Methods Adults with ASD (n = 23) and neurotypical controls (n = 25) completed a social fear learning (SFL) procedure in which participants watched a “demonstrator” receiving electrical shocks in conjunction with a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS+), but never with a safe control stimulus (CS−). Skin conductance was used to measure autonomic responses of learned threat responses to the CS+ versus CS−. Visual attention was measured during learning using eye tracking. To establish a non-social learning baseline, each participant also underwent a test of Pavlovian conditioning. Results During learning, individuals with ASD attended less to the demonstrator’s face, and when later tested, displayed stronger observational, but not Pavlovian, autonomic indices of learning (skin conductance) compared to controls. In controls, both higher levels of attention to the demonstrator’s face and trait empathy predicted diminished expressions of learning during test. Limitations The relatively small sample size of this study and the typical IQ range of the ASD group limit the generalizability of our findings to individuals with ASD in the average intellectual ability range. Conclusions The enhanced social threat learning in individuals with ASD may be linked to difficulties using visual attention and mental state attributions to downregulate their emotion.

Learning from others' experience: Social fear conditioning deficits in patients with severe alcohol use disorder

“…During the test phase, we replicated the general SFL effect (Espinosa et al, 2020; González‐Rodríguez et al, 2021) but also found an interaction between CS and group such that only healthy controls showed a higher SCR in response to the CS+ compared to CS−. This important result indicates significant learning in the control group and nonexistent learning in the patients with severe AUD.…”

“…This might account for the observed tendency toward an interaction between group and CS type during the test phase. However, we can note that the large effect size on which we based our sample size calculations was based on a study involving individuals with autistic disorder (Espinosa et al, 2020).…”

“…To determine the sample size, we relied on one study that investigated SFL in a clinical population, that is, individuals with autism spectrum disorder compared to healthy volunteers (Espinosa et al, 2020). The power calculation predicted that a total of 60 participants would be needed with an expected effect size of d = 0.66 (medium effect size), a statistical threshold of α = 0.05, and a power of 1 − β = 0.80.…”

A partner's smile is not per se a safety signal: Psychophysiological response patterns to instructed threat and safety

“…Often, threat and safety information is socially communicated by observing the actions and experiences of others or through verbal instructions (e.g., Bandura & Walters, 1977;Olsson & Phelps, 2007). Such social learning processes provide important, but rarely studied, information on the emergence, maintenance, and treatment of (anxiety) psychopathology (Espinosa et al, 2020;Muris & Field, 2010;Schellhaas et al, 2022).…”

Heterogeneity in strategy use during arbitration between experiential and observational learning

“…Social anxiety has also been found to be associated with excessive deliberation 41 and with suboptimal learning 42 . Finally, autism has been linked to deficits in behavioral adaptation during social inference, specifically suboptimal flexibility and lower mentalizing sophistication 43 , overestimation of the volatility of sensory environment 44 , reduced implicit causal inference about sensory signals 45 , and enhanced observational learning in the aversive domain 46 . Therefore, we hypothesized that anxiety, as well as social dysfunctions associated with autism and social anxiety are likely to be sensitive to the computational heterogeneity in strategy use during EL, OL, and the arbitration between them.…”