Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA.
Autism Res. 2012 Dec;5(6):398-406. doi: 10.1002/aur.1255. Epub 2012 Oct 24.
An important aspect of successful emotion regulation is the ability to adjust emotional responses to changing environmental cues. Difficulties with such adaptation may underlie both marked symptoms of behavioral inflexibility and frequent severe anxiety in the autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Thirty children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD and 29 age- and intelligence quotient-matched controls completed a reversal learning paradigm following partial reinforcement Pavlovian fear conditioning, using a surprising air puff as the unconditioned stimulus. After initial reversal of cue contingencies, where a previously safe cue now predicted the air puff threat, the control group but not the ASD group responded more strongly to the new threat cue. The ASD group showed evidence for reversal learning only during later trials. Reversal learning in the ASD group was significantly negatively correlated with everyday symptoms of behavioral inflexibility but not with everyday anxiety. Understanding shared associations between inflexibility, anxiety, and autism, with regard both to clinical symptoms and neurobiological mechanisms, can provide important markers for better characterizing the substantial heterogeneity across the autism spectrum.
成功进行情绪调节的一个重要方面是能够根据环境变化调整情绪反应。这种适应困难可能是行为灵活性明显症状和自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中频繁出现严重焦虑的基础。30 名被诊断患有 ASD 的儿童和青少年和 29 名年龄和智商匹配的对照组在部分强化巴甫洛夫恐惧条件作用后完成了反转学习范式，使用令人惊讶的空气喷溅作为非条件刺激。在最初的线索关联反转后，之前安全的线索现在预示着空气喷溅威胁，对照组而非 ASD 组对新的威胁线索反应更强烈。ASD 组仅在后期试验中表现出反转学习的证据。ASD 组的反转学习与日常行为灵活性的症状显著负相关，但与日常焦虑无关。了解灵活性、焦虑和自闭症之间的共同关联，无论是针对临床症状还是神经生物学机制，都可以为更好地描述自闭症谱系的巨大异质性提供重要指标。
