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

Abstract

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.

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

“…This observation supports the view that preferential looking toward social stimuli can be a proxy for social features of autism, and is not a proxy for general cognitive ability. It is also consistent with the results of a recent meta-analysis that showed no effect of IQ on preferential looking toward social stimuli (Hedger et al, 2020). Reduced attention to social stimuli has been widely noted in autistic children and adults, and has been suggested to be predictive of autistic symptomatology in later childhood (Bacon et al, 2020).…”

“…Specifically in the social domain, greater attention to social over non-social rewards was noted in TD children, using a preferential looking task. This pattern of results is consistent with reports on similar paradigms applied in laboratory settings, using standard infra-red eye trackers (Hedger et al, 2020). This observation supports the view that preferential looking toward social stimuli can be a proxy for social features of autism, and is not a proxy for general cognitive ability.…”

Williams syndrome: Reduced attention to other’s eyes in a hypersocial phenotype

“…Our results point to a potential overlap between WS and autism spectrum disorder, which is associated with reduced orienting to social stimuli such as faces and eyes [63] , [64]. This similarity is interesting, given the fact that WS is also associated with increased social motivation and interest in faces, traits that are typically not seen in ASD [15].…”

Prevalence and Characteristics of Social Withdrawal Tendency Among 3–24 Months in China: A Pilot Study

“…Social withdrawal in infancy and early childhood shares some common behavioral characteristics with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and hikikomori ( 1 , 8 , 30 – 32 ). However, these three conditions appear in different age groups, and thus the influence on cognitive and psychological development may vary ( 33 , 34 ). Although a high ADBB score might be an early signal for ASD and hikikomori in later life, there is a lack of evidence, especially from prospective studies, that supports an association of social withdrawal in infancy and early childhood with subsequent ASD and hikikomori.…”