Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Social Inferences in Typical and Autistic Adolescents

doi:10.1016/j.bpsc.2020.07.002

Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging

Volume 6, Issue 8, August 2021, Pages 782-791

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2020.07.002 Get rights and content

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.

Section snippets

Methods and Materials

The study consisted of 2 assessments, an online preference survey in a large sample of adolescents (N = 99; 55 female; age, mean ± SD = 15.7 ± 1.4 years; age range = 11–18 years) to establish preferences of the adolescent population, and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment in a separate group of TD adolescents (n = 26; 11 female; age, mean ± SD = 13.7 ± 2.5 years; age range = 9–18 years) and adolescents with ASD (n = 20; 12 female; age, mean ± SD = 14.8 ± 2.8 years; age

Differences in Social Inferences Between Typical and Autistic Adolescents

We tested group differences in task performance with 2 different metrics: unsigned model-free PEs (the numerical differences between estimates and feedback) and open-answer descriptions of preference profiles. Average accuracy, i.e., average absolute model-free Pes, did not differentiate between TD adolescents and adolescents with ASD. Median model-free PEs were on average equally high (median for TD = 2.49; median for ASD = 2.49; H-test on median PEs: χ²₄₅ = 0.07, p = .790) and reduced over

Discussion

This study investigated how adolescents with and without autism build knowledge representations of their peers. We tested whether adolescents rely on preexisting social knowledge to make preference inferences and how their knowledge is updated during learning about a specific peer. Based on preference profiles from an independent sample of adolescents, we devised computational models that combine knowledge about peers at varying levels of complexity with PE updating. TD adolescents relied on a

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

This research was supported by the Hilibrand Fellowship for Autism Research at the Yale Child Study Center.

We thank Koen Frolichs for assisting us with data analysis.

This article was published as a preprint on bioRxiv: https://doi.org/10.1101/850552.

DL is a cofounder of Neurogazer. The other authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

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Archival ReportNeurocognitive Mechanisms of Social Inferences in Typical and Autistic Adolescents

Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Section snippets

Methods and Materials

Differences in Social Inferences Between Typical and Autistic Adolescents

Discussion

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

Dev Rev

Neurosci Biobehav Rev

Trends Cogn Sci

Biol Psychiatry

Neurosci Biobehav Rev

Clin Psychol Rev

Cognition

Trends Cogn Sci

Trends Cogn Sci

Neurosci Biobehav Rev

Neuron

Neuron

Dev Cogn Neurosci

Trends Cogn Sci

Is adolescence a sensitive period for sociocultural processing?

Annu Rev Psychol

The adolescent brain

Ann N Y Acad Sci

Development of rostral prefrontal cortex and cognitive and behavioural disorders

Dev Med Child Neurol

Adolescent brain development in normality and psychopathology

Dev Psychopathol

Brain development during childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal MRI study

Nat Neurosci

Special issue on the teenage brain: Sensitivity to social evaluation

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

A computational account of optimizing social predictions reveals that adolescents are conservative learners in social contexts

J Neurosci

The medial prefrontal cortex and the emergence of self-conscious emotion in adolescence

Psychol Sci

Charting the typical and atypical development of the social brain

Dev Psychopathol

The association between theory of mind, executive function, and the symptoms of autism spectrum disorder

Autism Res

Children with autism fail to orient to naturally occurring social stimuli

J Autism Dev Disord

The enactive mind, or from actions to cognition: Lessons from autism

Philos Trans R Soc B Biol Sci

More thoughts on the unconscious: Reply to Brody and to Lewicki and Hill

J Exp Psychol Gen

Efficiency and conceptual fluency as independent mechanisms in implicit learning

Diss Abstr Int Sect B Sci Eng

On the relationship between task performance and associated verbalizable knowledge

Q J Exp Psychol Sect A

Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture

Archival Report
Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Social Inferences in Typical and Autistic Adolescents