Child Neuropsychology Section, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2011 Nov;41(11):1523-33. doi: 10.1007/s10803-011-1177-1.
Social motivation deficit theories suggest that children with autism do not properly anticipate and appreciate the pleasure of social stimuli. In this study, we investigated event-related brain potentials evoked by cues that triggered social versus monetary reward anticipation in children with autism. Children with autism showed attenuated P3 activity in response to cues associated with a timely reaction to obtain a reward, irrespective of reward type. We attribute this atypical P3 activity in response to reward cues as reflective of diminished motivated attention to reward signals, a possible contributor to reduced social motivation in autism. Thus, our findings suggest a general reward processing deficit rather than a specific social reward dysfunction in autism.
社交动机缺失理论认为，自闭症儿童不能正确预测和欣赏社交刺激带来的乐趣。在这项研究中，我们调查了自闭症儿童在社会奖励和金钱奖励预期线索下诱发的事件相关脑电位。自闭症儿童对及时反应以获得奖励相关线索的 P3 活动减弱，而与奖励类型无关。我们将这种对奖励线索的异常 P3 活动归因于对奖励信号的动机注意力降低，这可能是自闭症中社交动机降低的原因之一。因此，我们的研究结果表明，自闭症中存在一般的奖励处理缺陷，而不是特定的社会奖励功能障碍。
