Relating Attentional Biases for Stimuli Associated with Social Reward and Punishment to Autistic Traits

Abstract

Evidence for impaired attention to social stimuli in autism has been mixed. The role of social feedback in shaping attention to other, non-social stimuli that are predictive of such feedback has not been examined in the context of autism. In the present study, participants searched for a color-defined target during a training phase, with the color of the target predicting the emotional reaction of a face that appeared after each trial. Then, participants performed visual search for a shape-defined target while trying to ignore the color of stimuli. On a subset of trials, one of the non-targets was rendered in the color of a former target from training. Autistic traits were measured for each participant using the Autism Quotient (AQ). Our findings replicate robust attentional capture by stimuli learned to predict valenced social feedback. There was no evidence that autistic traits are associated with blunted attention to predictors of social outcomes. Consistent with an emerging body of literature, our findings cast doubt on strong versions of the claim that autistic traits can be explained by a blunted influence of social information on the attention system. We extend these findings to non-social stimuli that predict socially relevant information.

An adaptive view of attentional control.

“…Interestingly, and consistent with the principle of parsimony in the coupling of involuntary attentional control to biological needs, learning from reward and punishment appear to influence the control of attention via a common underlying mechanism. Behaviorally, reward learning and punishment learning typically have comparable effects on the orienting of attention (Anderson & Kim, 2018c; Watson et al, 2019). Compellingly, the neural correlates of attentional capture by previously reward-associated (see Anderson, 2019) and previously punishment-associated stimuli appear indistinguishable (Kim et al, in press).…”

Punishment-modulated attentional capture is context specific.

“…Distraction by punishment-associated cues was also reported after conditioning with white noise (e.g., Koster et al, 2004; S. D. Smith et al, 2006), monetary loss (e.g., Wentura et al, 2014), or negative social feedback (Anderson, 2017; Anderson & Kim, 2018). Furthermore, oculomotor capture by punishment-related stimuli was demonstrated in eye-tracking studies (Mulckhuyse & Dalmaijer, 2016; Schmidt et al, 2015b).…”

On the automaticity of attentional orienting to threatening stimuli.

“…Consistent with this hypothesis, a variety of experiments have demonstrated attentional biases toward aversively conditioned stimuli. For example, stimuli previously associated with aversive electric shock (e.g., Schmidt, Belopolsky, & Theeuwes, 2015a;Wang, Yu, & Zhou, 2013), white noise (e.g., Koster, Crombez, Van Damme, Verschuere, & De Houwer, 2004;Smith, Most, Newsome, & Zald, 2006), monetary loss (e.g., Wentura, Müller, & Rothermund, 2014), or negative social feedback (Anderson, 2017;Anderson & Kim, 2018) during a conditioning phase impair performance on visual tasks, consistent with distraction by aversively conditioned stimuli. Furthermore, goal-directed eye movements are biased toward aversively conditioned stimuli, which are more frequently fixated when presented as task-irrelevant distractors compared with otherwise equivalent distractors without such association (Mulckhuyse, Crombez, & Van der Stigchel, 2013;Mulckhuyse & Dalmaijer, 2016;Schmidt, Belopolsky, & Theeuwes, 2015b).…”