Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Jun 12;7(1):3329.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-03615-x.

Reduced preference for social rewards in a novel tablet based task in young children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Liliana Ruta  1   2 , Francesca Isabella Famà  1   3 , Giuseppe Massimo Bernava  1 , Elisa Leonardi  1   3 , Gennaro Tartarisco  1 , Alessandra Falzone  3 , Giovanni Pioggia  1 , Bhismadev Chakrabarti  4
Affiliations

Reduced preference for social rewards in a novel tablet based task in young children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Liliana Ruta et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Atypical responsivity to social rewards has been observed in young children with or at risk of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). These observations contributed to the hypothesis of reduced social motivation in ASD. In the current study we develop a novel task to test social reward preference using a tablet computer (iPad), where two differently coloured buttons were associated with a social and a nonsocial rewarding image respectively. 63 young children, aged 14-68 months, with and without a diagnosis of ASD took part in the study. The experimental sessions were also recorded on video, using an in-built webcam on the tablet as well as an external camera. Children with ASD were found to show a reduced relative preference for social rewards, indexed by a lower proportion of touches for the button associated with the social reward image. Greater social preference as measured using the tablet-based task was associated with increased use of social communicative behaviour such as eye contact with the experimenter and social smile in response to the social reward image. These results are consistent with earlier findings from eye-tracking studies, and provide novel empirical insights into atypical social reward responsivity in ASD.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic representation of a trial. The child would press one of the buttons on the screen in order to reveal either of the two pictures. These pictures would last for 3s, and then be replaced by the screen with the buttons after an inter-trial interval of 3s. Pictures used in this figure are representative, due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Group difference in relative preference for social stimuli for the real and scrambled image trials respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5®). (American Psychiatric Pub, 2013).
    1. Chakrabarti B, Kent L, Suckling J, Bullmore E, Baron-Cohen S. Variations in the human cannabinoid receptor (CNR1) gene modulate striatal responses to happy faces. Eur. J. Neurosci. 2006;23:1944–1948. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006.04697.x. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Blair RJR. Facial expressions, their communicatory functions and neuro-cognitive substrates. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 2003;358:561–572. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2002.1220. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kringelbach ML, Rolls ET. Neural correlates of rapid reversal learning in a simple model of human social interaction. Neuroimage. 2003;20:1371–1383. doi: 10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00393-8. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Dawson G, et al. Neural Correlates of Face and Object Recognition in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Developmental Delay, and Typical Development. Child Dev. 2002;73:700–717. doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00433. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types