Hypo‐ or hyperarousal? The mechanisms underlying social information processing in autism

Yi, Li; Wang, Qiandong; Song, Ci; Han, Zhuo Rachel

doi:10.1111/cdep.12466

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Overall therefore or current results tend to support the eye avoidance hypothesis and stress the importance of increased affective arousal but not the social motivation hypothesis in ASD. This means that instead of a lack of motivation, some autistic children could be steering away from social stimuli so as to lessen their tension and discomfort (Yi et al, 2022). Consistent with our observation of increased responsivity to social reward being associated with greater adaptive behavior difficulties and symptom severity in children with ASD a review has shown a link between increased focus on the face/head and eye regions and improved social performance and reduced autism symptom severity (Riddiford et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered Orbitofrontal Cortex Activation and Gaze Patterns to Happy Faces in Autistic Children Predict Adaptive Difficulties but Challenge the Social Motivation Hypothesis

Yang,

Zhang,

Wei

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) generally have altered responses to social reward, which the “social motivation” hypothesis posits as the primary contributor to their social deficits. Aberrant perception of rewarding faces is considered to be one of the most significant markers of this hypothesis. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) plays an important role in modulating reward and arousal responses to happy faces but few studies have investigated whether young autistic children with limited cognitive or language ability have altered neural and behavioral responses to reward related tasks. We therefore conducted an eye-tracking task where autistic (n = 36) and typically developing (n = 36) young children (aged 2.5-6 years) viewed the faces of happy children or of simplified faces (emoticons), combined with OFC activation measurement using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), to compare ASD and typically developing (TD) children. Results revealed no differences between the two groups for time spent viewing happy faces although TD children spent more time looking at the eyes of real faces and at the mouths of emoticons whereas children with ASD did not. Children with ASD showed a greater pupil diameter (PD) and OFC activation compared to TD children during presentation of happy faces. Indeed, greater PD and OFC responses were predictive of greater adaptive behavior difficulties and severity of symptoms. Our results therefore demonstrate different gaze patterns and greater arousal and brain reward system responses to happy faces in young children with ASD which are incongruent with social motivation hypothesis.Availability of dataOur ethics approval does not permit public archiving of individual anonymized raw data. Those who wish to access the raw data should contact the corresponding author. Access will be granted to named individuals who adhere to the ethical procedures governing the reuse of sensitive data. They must complete a formal data sharing agreement to obtain the data. The data that support the main group different finding figures related anonymized data of this study are openly available via the Open Science Framework (OSF) Repositoryhttps://osf.io/sxkhc/?view_only=6eb51e64a9b54fce909b5ff6eacdc668Ethics approval statementThe study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. It was approved by the Local Ethics Committee (number 202165).Research Highlights●The present study examined whether altered social reward processing in ASD is caused by reduced behavioral and neural responses to rewarding stimuli.●Typically developing children showed a preference for viewing specific informative facial features (such as child eyes or emoticon mouths), children with autism did not.●Children with autism enhanced arousal (pupil dilation) and brain reward (orbitofrontal cortex) responses to happy child faces.●Altered, gaze patterns, arousal and brain reward responses were highly predictive of adaptive behavior abilities and autistic symptom severity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered Orbitofrontal Cortex Activation and Gaze Patterns to Happy Faces in Autistic Children Predict Adaptive Difficulties but Challenge the Social Motivation Hypothesis

Yang,

Zhang,

Wei

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…Researchers could systematically address how often traits classically associated with autism manifest as both hypo- and hyper variants [see ( 41 )]. This a relatively novel idea and mostly confined to research on sensory sensitivity ( 42 ), although scholars have discussed hypo- vs. hyper-arousal underlying social functioning ( 43 ). Bimodality in functioning is routinely discussed in autism discussion forums, in domains barely touched by scholars, such as language, face recognition, analytical intelligence, and memory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autistic discussion forums: insights into the topics that clinicians don’t know about

Caldwell-Harris,

McGlowan,

Beitia

2023

Front. Psychiatry

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BackgroundUser-led autism discussion forums provide a wealth of information about autistic lived experiences, albeit oriented toward those who regularly use computers. We contend that healthcare professionals should read autism discussion forums to gain insight, be informed, and in some cases, to correct assumptions about autistic persons’ lives and possibilities. But experts may be dismissive of user-led forums, believing forums to be filled with myths, misinformation, and combative postings. The questions motivating our research were: Do online forums raise issues that are educational for clinicians and other stakeholders? Are forums useful for those who do empirical research?MethodContent analysis was conducted on 300 posts (62,000 words) from Reddit, Quora, and Wrong Planet. Forums were sampled to reflect broad topics; posts were selected sequentially from the identified forums. The authors read through posts in the Excel sheet, highlighting statements that were the main ideas of the post, to discern both broad categories of topics and more specific topics. We coded content pertinent to classic autism myths and analyzed attitudes towards myths such as ‘lack emotion’ and ‘cannot form relationships.’ To document whether forum posts discuss topics that are not widely known outside of elite experts, we compared discussion content to new material about autism contained in the March 2022 DSM 5 Text revision.ResultsClassic autism myths were discussed with examples of when elements of myths may be valid. Posters described cases where parents or therapists believed myths. Experts may believe autism myths due to rapid changes in diagnostic practices and due to their lack of knowledge regarding the characteristics of autistic people who have typical intellectual abilities. We conclude that forums contain high-value information for clinicians because all concepts in the DSM 5 text revision were discussed by posters in the years before the text revision appeared. Ideas that are only slowly becoming part of the research literature are discussed at length in forums. Reading and analyzing forums is useful for both clinicians and scientists. In addition, the relative ease of forum analysis lowers the bar for entry into the research process.

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“…First, it may be that equivalent learning between groups comes at a greater cost for autistic people (compensatory hypothesis). Both hyper- or hypo-arousal during social information processing have been associated with autistic people [ 65 ]. Autistic people also show abnormalities in executive function, sensory processing and emotional regulation [ 22 , 37 , 54 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autistic adults benefit from and enjoy learning via social interaction as much as neurotypical adults do

De Felice,

Hatilova,

Trojan

et al. 2023

Molecular Autism

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Background Autistic people show poor processing of social signals (i.e. about the social world). But how do they learn via social interaction? Methods 68 neurotypical adults and 60 autistic adults learned about obscure items (e.g. exotic animals) over Zoom (i) in a live video-call with the teacher, (ii) from a recorded learner-teacher interaction video and (iii) from a recorded teacher-alone video. Data were analysed via analysis of variance and multi-level regression models. Results Live teaching provided the most optimal learning condition, with no difference between groups. Enjoyment was the strongest predictor of learning: both groups enjoyed the live interaction significantly more than other condition and reported similar anxiety levels across conditions. Limitations Some of the autistic participants were self-diagnosed—however, further analysis where these participants were excluded showed the same results. Recruiting participants over online platforms may have introduced bias in our sample. Future work should investigate learning in social contexts via diverse sources (e.g. schools). Conclusions These findings advocate for a distinction between learning about the social versus learning via the social: cognitive models of autism should be revisited to consider social interaction not just as a puzzle to decode but rather a medium through which people, including neuro-diverse groups, learn about the world around them. Trial registration Part of this work has been pre-registered before data collection https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5PGA3

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Hypo‐ or hyperarousal? The mechanisms underlying social information processing in autism

Cited by 16 publications

References 62 publications

Altered Orbitofrontal Cortex Activation and Gaze Patterns to Happy Faces in Autistic Children Predict Adaptive Difficulties but Challenge the Social Motivation Hypothesis

Altered Orbitofrontal Cortex Activation and Gaze Patterns to Happy Faces in Autistic Children Predict Adaptive Difficulties but Challenge the Social Motivation Hypothesis

Autistic discussion forums: insights into the topics that clinicians don’t know about

Autistic adults benefit from and enjoy learning via social interaction as much as neurotypical adults do

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