Enhanced social learning of threat in adults with autism.
Lisa Espinosa, Johan Lundin Kleberg, Björn Hofvander and 3 others
PMID 32962741WHAT IT FOUND
Adults with autism showed stronger physiological fear responses after observing another person receive shocks.
They showed typical fear learning when shocked directly. The difference was specific to social threat learning.
Key findings
01In the test phase, skin conductance responses to the threat cue were larger in the ASD group than in the control group.
02During the observation learning phase, ASD and control groups did not differ in the conditioned fear response.
03In controls, more fixation on the demonstrator's face during threat cue events predicted a lower conditioned fear response; no such relationship was found in the ASD group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The eye-tracking links were correlational, so they do not show that reduced face looking caused stronger fear learning. The sample was small and not powered to identify subgroups within autism. The ASD group had relatively high IQ, so results may not apply to people with autism in the average intellectual ability range. The ASD and control groups were not matched on anxiety levels. The direct shock task always came after the social learning task, so earlier learning may have affected later results.
Declared interests
Funding was from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and H2020 European Research Council.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that reduced face looking causes stronger fear learning in autism. The eye-tracking link was correlational, and the study measured lab fear responses rather than treatment outcomes.