Abstract
Background
Many of our efforts in social interactions are dedicated to learning about others.
Adolescents with autism have core deficits in social learning, but a mechanistic understanding
of these deficits and how they relate to neural development is lacking. The present
study aimed to specify how adolescents with and without autism represent and acquire
social knowledge and how these processes are implemented in neural activity.
Methods
Typically developing adolescents (n = 26) and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (n = 20) rated in the magnetic resonance scanner how much 3 peers liked a variety of
items and received trial-by-trial feedback about the peers’ actual preference ratings.
In a separate study, we established the preferences of a new sample of adolescents
(N = 99), used to examine population preference structures. Using computational models,
we tested whether participants in the magnetic resonance study relied on preference
structures during learning and how model predictions were implemented in brain activity.
Results
Typically developing adolescents relied on average population preferences and prediction
error updating. Importantly, prediction error updating was scaled by the similarity
between items. In contrast, preferences of adolescents with ASD were best described
by a No-Learning model that relied only on the participant’s own preferences for each
item. Model predictions were encoded in neural activity. Typically developing adolescents
encoded prediction errors in the putamen, and adolescents with ASD showed greater
encoding of own preferences in the angular gyrus.
Conclusions
We specified how adolescents represent and update social knowledge during learning.
Our findings indicate that adolescents with ASD rely only on their own preferences
when making social inferences.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 14, 2020
Accepted:
June 6,
2020
Received in revised form:
June 1,
2020
Received:
February 14,
2020
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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- Studying Social Inferences in and Across Social BrainsBiological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and NeuroimagingVol. 6Issue 8
- PreviewPsychiatric disorders are ubiquitously characterized by social interaction difficulties, which has led to the suggestion that they could be construed as “disorders of social interaction” (1). Social impairments, indeed, can be found transdiagnostically and may precede the onset of other symptoms, but can also be a primary characteristic, such as in the case of developmental disorders. Developmental trajectories vary significantly across individuals and are shaped by both internal and external factors that affect social learning and its outcomes.
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