Department of Educational Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy.
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, IRCCS, Rome, Italy.
J Neurodev Disord. 2024 Aug 31;16(1):50. doi: 10.1186/s11689-024-09568-3.
Sharing and fairness are important prosocial behaviors that help us navigate the social world. However, little is known about how and whether individuals with Williams Syndrome (WS) engage in these behaviors. The unique phenotype of individuals with WS, consisting of high social motivation and limited social cognition, can also offer insight into the role of social motivation in sharing and fairness when compared to typically developing (TD) individuals. The current study used established experimental paradigms to examine sharing and fairness in individuals with WS and TD individuals.
We compared a sample of patients with WS to TD children (6-year-olds) matched by mental age (MA) on two experimental tasks: the Dictator Game (DG, Experiment 1, N = 17 WS, 20 TD) with adults modeling giving behaviors used to test sharing and the Inequity Game (IG, Experiment 2, N = 14 WS, 17 TD) used to test fairness.
Results showed that the WS group behaved similarly to the TD group for baseline giving in the DG and in the IG, rejecting disadvantageous offers but accepting advantageous ones. However, after viewing an adult model giving behavior, the WS group gave more than their baseline, with many individuals giving more than half, while the TD group gave less. Combined these results suggest that social motivation is sufficient for sharing and, in particular, generous sharing, as well as the self-focused form of fairness. Further, individuals with WS appear capable of both learning to be more generous and preventing disadvantageous outcomes, a more complex profile than previously known.
In conclusion, the present study provides a snapshot into sharing and fairness-related behaviors in WS, contributing to our understanding of the intriguing social-behavioral phenotype associated with this developmental disorder.
分享和公平是重要的亲社会行为，有助于我们在社交世界中生存。然而，目前对于威廉姆斯综合征（WS）患者是否以及如何表现出这些行为知之甚少。WS 患者独特的表型由高度的社交动机和有限的社交认知组成，与典型发育（TD）个体相比，这种表型也可以深入了解社交动机在分享和公平中的作用。本研究使用既定的实验范式，研究了 WS 患者和 TD 个体的分享和公平行为。
我们将 WS 患者与 TD 儿童（6 岁）进行比较，他们的心理年龄（MA）相匹配，进行了两个实验任务：独裁者游戏（DG，实验 1，N=17 WS，20 TD），成人示范给予行为，用于测试分享，以及不公平游戏（IG，实验 2，N=14 WS，17 TD），用于测试公平。
结果表明，WS 组在 DG 和 IG 的基线给予方面与 TD 组行为相似，拒绝不利的提议，但接受有利的提议。然而，在观察到成人的给予行为后，WS 组的给予量超过了基线，许多个体的给予量超过了一半，而 TD 组的给予量减少了。综合这些结果表明，社交动机足以促进分享，特别是慷慨的分享，以及自我关注的公平形式。此外，WS 患者似乎能够学会更加慷慨大方，并防止不利的结果，这是一种比之前已知的更为复杂的行为模式。
总之，本研究提供了 WS 患者在分享和公平相关行为方面的一个快照，有助于我们理解与这种发育障碍相关的引人入胜的社会行为表型。
