Health Research Institute La Fe, University and Polytechnic Hospital La Fe, Valencia, Spain; Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain; Center of Cognitive Science, Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain.
Res Dev Disabil. 2023 Sep;140:104567. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2023.104567. Epub 2023 Jul 17.
Autistic individuals often exhibit social communication and socio-emotional styles that may interfere with achieving social and academic outcomes. At a more specific level, they may perform differently in various social and academic tasks due to different modes of processing rewards or unpleasant experiences (e.g., frustrating events).
The present experiment examines how rewards and frustration affect the task performance of autistic children and adolescents METHODS AND PROCEDURES: An affective Posner task was applied to introduce rewards and induce frustration. Forty-four autistic children and adolescents and forty-four typically developing (TD) peers participated in this study OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Results showed that presenting social and non-social rewards resulted in shorter reaction times and lower error rates in autistic participants, but not in their TD peers. While frustration increased error rates in both autistic and TD individuals, the effect was more pronounced in the autistic group.
Social and non-social rewards help the performance of autistic children and adolescents, whereas frustration (induced through unpredictable feedback) significantly interferes with their task performance. Therefore, receiving two types of rewards and providing predictable feedback may help to improve interventions designed to optimize task performance for autistic children and adolescents.
自闭症个体通常表现出社交沟通和社会情感风格，这可能会干扰他们获得社交和学业成果。在更具体的层面上，由于处理奖励或不愉快体验（例如，挫折事件）的方式不同，他们在各种社交和学术任务中的表现可能不同。
本实验研究了奖励和挫折如何影响自闭症儿童和青少年的任务表现。
应用情感 Posner 任务引入奖励并引发挫折。44 名自闭症儿童和青少年以及 44 名典型发育（TD）同龄人参加了这项研究。
结果表明，呈现社会和非社会奖励会缩短自闭症参与者的反应时间并降低错误率，但对 TD 同龄人没有影响。虽然挫折会增加自闭症和 TD 个体的错误率，但在自闭症组中更为明显。
社会和非社会奖励有助于自闭症儿童和青少年的表现，而挫折（通过不可预测的反馈引起）则会严重干扰他们的任务表现。因此，提供两种类型的奖励和提供可预测的反馈可能有助于改善旨在优化自闭症儿童和青少年任务表现的干预措施。
