Rosenblau Gabriela, Korn Christoph W, Dutton Abigail, Lee Daeyeol, Pelphrey Kevin A
Center for Translational Developmental Neuroscience, Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute, George Washington University, Washington, DC; Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, George Washington University, Washington DC.
Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2021 Aug;6(8):782-791. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2020.07.002. Epub 2020 Jul 15.
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.
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.
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.
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.
我们在社交互动中的许多努力都致力于了解他人。患有自闭症的青少年在社会学习方面存在核心缺陷，但对这些缺陷及其与神经发育的关系缺乏机制性的理解。本研究旨在明确患有和未患有自闭症的青少年如何表征和获取社会知识，以及这些过程在神经活动中是如何实现的。
发育正常的青少年（n = 26）和患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的青少年（n = 20）在磁共振扫描仪中对3个同龄人对各种物品的喜爱程度进行评分，并逐次试验地获得关于同龄人实际偏好评分的反馈。在另一项研究中，我们确定了一个新的青少年样本（N = 99）的偏好，用于检验总体偏好结构。使用计算模型，我们测试了磁共振研究中的参与者在学习过程中是否依赖偏好结构，以及模型预测是如何在大脑活动中实现的。
发育正常的青少年依赖于总体平均偏好和预测误差更新。重要的是，预测误差更新是根据物品之间的相似度进行缩放的。相比之下，ASD青少年的偏好最好用一个“无学习”模型来描述，该模型仅依赖于参与者对每个物品的自身偏好。模型预测在神经活动中得到编码。发育正常的青少年在壳核中编码预测误差，而患有ASD的青少年在角回中对自身偏好的编码更强。
我们明确了青少年在学习过程中如何表征和更新社会知识。我们的研究结果表明，患有ASD的青少年在进行社会推理时仅依赖于他们自己的偏好。
