scholarly journals Autistic Traits Affect P300 Response to Unexpected Events, regardless of Mental State Inferences

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Mitsuhiko Ishikawa ◽  
Shoji Itakura ◽  
Hiroki C. Tanabe
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Waveform Analysis ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Unexpected Events ◽  
Related Potentials

Limited use of contextual information has been suggested as a way of understanding cognition in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, it has also been argued that individuals with ASD may have difficulties inferring others’ mental states. Here, we examined how individuals with different levels of autistic traits respond to contextual deviations by measuring event-related potentials that reflect context usage. The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) was used to quantify autistic-like traits in 28 university students, and 19 participants were defined as Low or High AQ groups. To additionally examine inferences about mental state, two belief conditions (with or without false belief) were included. Participants read short stories in which the final sentence included either an expected or an unexpected word and rated the word’s degree of deviation from expectation. P300 waveform analysis revealed that unexpected words were associated with larger P300 waveforms for the Low AQ group, but smaller P300 responses in the High AQ group. Additionally, AQ social skill subscores were positively correlated with evaluation times in the Unexpected condition, whether a character’s belief was false or not. This suggests that autistic traits can affect responses to unexpected events, possibly because of decreased availability of context information.

scholarly journals Altered neuronal habituation to hearing others’ pain in adults with autistic traits

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Meng ◽  
Zuoshan Li ◽  
Lin Shen
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Passive Listening ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Listening Task

Abstract This study tested the hypothesis that autistic traits influence the neuronal habituation that underlies the processing of others’ pain. Based on their autism-spectrum quotient (AQ), two groups of participants were classified according to their autistic traits: High-AQ and Low-AQ groups. Their event-related potentials in response to trains of three identical audio recordings, exhibiting either painful or neutral feelings of others, were compared during three experimental tasks. (1) In a Pain Judgment Task, participants were instructed to focus on pain-related cues in the presented audio recordings. (2) In a Gender Judgment Task, participants were instructed to focus on non-pain-related cues in the presented audio recordings. (3) In a Passive Listening Task, participants were instructed to passively listen. In the High-AQ group, an altered empathic pattern of habituation, indexed by frontal-central P2 responses of the second repeated painful audio recordings, was found during the Passive Listening Task. Nevertheless, both High-AQ and Low-AQ groups exhibited similar patterns of habituation to hearing others’ voices, both neutral and painful, in the Pain Judgment and Gender Judgment Tasks. These results suggest altered empathic neuronal habituation in the passive processing of others’ vocal pain by individuals with autistic traits.

scholarly journals Altered processing of social emotions in individuals with autistic traits

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Yang ◽  
Hengheng Tao ◽  
Hongxing Ge ◽  
Zuoshan Li ◽  
Yuanyan Hu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
Social Emotions ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Negative Stimuli

Abstract BackgroundSocial impairment is a defining phenotypic feature of autism. The present study investigated whether individuals with autistic traits exhibit altered perceptions of social emotions. MethodsTwo groups of participants (High-AQ and Low-AQ) were recruited based on their scores on the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ). Their behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERP) elicited by social and nonsocial stimuli with positive, negative, and neutral emotional valence were compared in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to view social-emotional and nonsocial-emotional pictures. In Experiment 2, participants were instructed to listen to social-emotional and nonsocial-emotional audio recordings. ResultsMore negative emotional reactions and smaller amplitudes of late ERP components (the late positive potential in Experiment 1 and the late negative component in Experiment 2) were found in the High-AQ group than in the Low-AQ group in response to the social-negative stimuli. In addition, amplitudes of these late ERP components in both experiments elicited in response to social-negative stimuli were correlated with the AQ scores of the High-AQ group. LimitationsAlthough the influence of autistic traits on reactions to social or nonsocial emotional stimuli was assessed in an experimental setting, whether and how these reactions are related to real-world behavior requires further investigation. In addition, filler trials should be used to evaluate whether participants focused sufficiently on the emotional stimuli. ConclusionThese results suggest that individuals with autistic traits have altered emotional processing of social-negative emotions.

scholarly journals Processing of expressions by individuals with autistic traits: Empathy deficit or sensory hyper-reactivity?

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0254207
Author(s):  
Chunyan Meng ◽  
Chao Huo ◽  
Hongxin Ge ◽  
Zuoshan Li ◽  
Yuanyan Hu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
World Theory ◽  
The Face ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Social Difficulties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Sensory Overload

Individuals with autistic traits display impaired social interaction and communication in everyday life, but the underlying cognitive neural mechanisms remain very unclear and still remain controversial. The mind-blindness hypothesis suggests that social difficulties in individuals with autistic traits are caused by empathy impairment in individuals; however, the intense world theory suggests that these social difficulties are caused by sensory hyper-reactivity and sensory overload, rather than empathy impairment. To further test these two theories, this study investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the cognitive neural processing of repetitive expressions in individuals with autistic traits. This study employed the Mandarin version of the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) to assess autistic traits in 2,502 healthy adults. Two subset groups were used, e.g., the participants of a high-AQ group were randomly selected among the 10% of individuals with the highest AQ scores; similarly, the participants in the low-AQ group were randomly selected from the 10% of participants with the lowest AQ scores. In an experiment, three different facial expressions (positive, neutral, or negative) of the same person were presented successively and pseudo-randomly in each trial. Participants needed to define the expression of the face that was presented last. The results showed that compared with the low-AQ group, the high-AQ group exhibited higher P1 amplitudes induced by the second and third presented expressions, as well as higher P3 amplitudes induced by the third presented negative expressions. This indicates that individuals with autistic traits may experience overly strong perception, attention, and cognitive evaluation to repetitive expressions, particularly negative expressions. This result supports the intense world theory more strongly than the mind-blindness hypothesis.

scholarly journals No association between autistic traits and contextual influences on eye-movements during reading

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Jon Brock
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Weak Central Coherence ◽  
Central Coherence ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Contextual Influences ◽  
Tentative Evidence ◽  
Preceding Sentence

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders are claimed to show a local cognitive bias, termed “weak central coherence”, which manifests in a reduced influence of contextual information on linguistic processing. Here, we investigated whether this bias might also be demonstrated by individuals who exhibit sub-clinical levels of autistic traits, as has been found for other aspects of autistic cognition. The eye-movements of 71 university students were monitored as they completed a reading comprehension task. Consistent with previous studies, participants made shorter fixations on words that were highly predicted on the basis of preceding sentence context. However, contrary to the weak central coherence account, this effect was not reduced amongst individuals with high levels of autistic traits, as measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Further exploratory analyses revealed that participants with high AQ scores fixated longer on words that resolved the meaning of an earlier homograph. However, this was only the case for sentences where the two potential meanings of the homograph result in different pronunciations. The results provide tentative evidence for differences in reading style that are associated with autistic traits, but fail to support the notion of weak central coherence extending into the non-autistic population.

scholarly journals Event-Related Potential to Conscious and Nonconscious Emotional Face Perception in Females with Autistic-Like Traits

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 2306
Author(s):  
Vilfredo De Pascalis ◽  
Giuliana Cirillo ◽  
Arianna Vecchio ◽  
Joseph Ciorciari
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Adult Women ◽  
Occipital Region ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Emotional Face

This study explored the electrocortical correlates of conscious and nonconscious perceptions of emotionally laden faces in neurotypical adult women with varying levels of autistic-like traits (Autism Spectrum Quotient—AQ). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the viewing of backward-masked images for happy, neutral, and sad faces presented either below (16 ms—subliminal) or above the level of visual conscious awareness (167 ms—supraliminal). Sad compared to happy faces elicited larger frontal-central N1, N2, and occipital P3 waves. We observed larger N1 amplitudes to sad faces than to happy and neutral faces in High-AQ (but not Low-AQ) scorers. Additionally, High-AQ scorers had a relatively larger P3 at the occipital region to sad faces. Regardless of the AQ score, subliminal perceived emotional faces elicited shorter N1, N2, and P3 latencies than supraliminal faces. Happy and sad faces had shorter N170 latency in the supraliminal than subliminal condition. High-AQ participants had a longer N1 latency over the occipital region than Low-AQ ones. In Low-AQ individuals (but not in High-AQ ones), emotional recognition with female faces produced a longer N170 latency than with male faces. N4 latency was shorter to female faces than male faces. These findings are discussed in view of their clinical implications and extension to autism.

scholarly journals No association between autistic traits and contextual influences on eye-movements during reading

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Jon Brock
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Weak Central Coherence ◽  
Central Coherence ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Contextual Influences ◽  
Tentative Evidence ◽  
Preceding Sentence

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders are claimed to show a local cognitive bias, termed “weak central coherence”, which manifests in a reduced influence of contextual information on linguistic processing. Here, we investigated whether this bias might also be demonstrated by individuals who exhibit sub-clinical levels of autistic traits, as has been found for other aspects of autistic cognition. The eye-movements of 71 university students were monitored as they completed a reading comprehension task. Consistent with previous studies, participants made shorter fixations on words that were highly predicted on the basis of preceding sentence context. However, contrary to the weak central coherence account, this effect was not reduced amongst individuals with high levels of autistic traits, as measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Further exploratory analyses revealed that participants with high AQ scores fixated longer on words that resolved the meaning of an earlier homograph. However, this was only the case for sentences where the two potential meanings of the homograph result in different pronunciations. The results provide tentative evidence for differences in reading style that are associated with autistic traits, but fail to support the notion of weak central coherence extending into the non-autistic population.

scholarly journals Kessler Psychological Distress (K6) Questionnaire Scores Can Predict Autistic Traits and the Current and Prospective Suicidal Ideation in Medical University Students: A Prospective Study

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824402199459
Author(s):  
Yumi Naito ◽  
Noriyuki Enomoto ◽  
Yosuke Kameno ◽  
Hidenori Yamasue ◽  
Takafumi Suda ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Distress ◽  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
University Students ◽  
Developmental Disorders ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Lifestyle Changes ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Short Questionnaire

Mental distress is highly prevalent in university students, and autistic traits can hinder academic education. The substantial lifestyle changes experienced by new university students can induce mood and anxiety dysfunctions and subsequent suicide-related behaviors. The aims of this study were to evaluate the detectability of suicidal ideation using the Kessler Psychological Distress (K6) questionnaire, a short and easily administered measure, and to elucidate the relationship between K6 scores and developmental disorders following university admission in medical students. The mental states of 341 new students at University School of Medicine were prospectively evaluated using the short questionnaire including the K6 at admission and 6 months later. Participants were simultaneously assessed on the five core features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), four features of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and presence of suicidal ideation on this short questionnaire. K6 scores were significantly higher 6 months after admission than at admission ( p = .028). Students with suicidal ideation had significantly higher K6 scores than those without ( p < .001), and K6 scores at admission differentiated students with suicidal ideation both at admission (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.947) and 6 months after admission (AUC = 0.913). K6 scores were positively correlated with scores of ASD- and ADHD-related items (ρ = .451 and .440, respectively) and with autism-spectrum quotient scores ( p = .041, ρ = .501). In conclusion, the K6 questionnaire may be useful in efficiently detecting university students with suicidal ideation or autistic traits.

scholarly journals Event-Related Potential to Conscious and Nonconscious Emotional Face Perception in Females with Autistic-Like Traits

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vilfredo De Pascalis ◽  
Giuliana Cirillo ◽  
Arianna Vecchio ◽  
Joseph Ciorciari
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Adult Women ◽  
Occipital Region ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Emotional Face

This study explored the electrocortical correlates of conscious and nonconscious perceptions of emotionally laden faces in neurotypical adult women with varying levels of autistic-like traits (Autism Spectrum Quotient - AQ). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the viewing of backward-masked images for happy, neutral, and sad faces presented either below (16 ms - subliminal) or above the level of visual conscious awareness (167 ms - supraliminal). Sad compared to happy faces elicited larger frontal-central N1, N2, and occipital P3 waves. We observed larger N1 amplitudes to sad faces than to happy and neutral faces in High-AQ (but not Low-AQ) scorers. Additionally, High-AQ scorers had a relatively larger P3 at the occipital region to sad faces. Regardless of the AQ score, subliminal perceived emotional faces elicited shorter N1, N2, and P3 latencies than supraliminal faces. Happy and sad faces had shorter N170 latency in the supraliminal than subliminal condition. High-AQ participants had a longer N1 latency over the occipital region than Low-AQ ones. In Low-AQ individuals (but not in High-AQ ones), emotional recognition with female faces produced a longer N170 latency than with male faces. N4 latency was shorter to female faces than male faces. These findings are discussed in view of their clinical implications and extension to autism.

scholarly journals Diachronic Tendency and Thinking Style Across the Broader Autism Spectrum: Sources of Individual Differences?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stian Orm ◽  
Ella Holt Holmberg ◽  
Paul L. Harris ◽  
Maria Nunez ◽  
Francisco Pons
Keyword(s):  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Broader Autism Phenotype ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Thinking Style ◽  
Mental Images ◽  
High School Degree ◽  
Future Events

Abstract Objectives First, to see whether previous studies showing a limited capacity to spontaneously evoke the past and the future of a present moment (diachronic tendency) and a prevalence of mental images over inner speech (thinking style) in individuals with autism spectrum disorder could be replicated in individuals belonging to the broader autism phenotype. Second, to test the hypothesis that individuals thinking with mental images have a more limited diachronic tendency compared with individuals thinking with inner speech. Methods Adults (N = 309, Mage = 31.5 years, 76% women) with at least a high school degree were assessed with the Autism Spectrum Quotient, a test of diachronic tendency comprising four pictures varying in social interactivity and dynamicity, and a thinking style scale comprising three items representing three different everyday situations. Results The results showed that adults with many autistic traits have a limited diachronic tendency but only when the situation is socially interactive and dynamic, think more in mental images than individuals with no or few autistic traits but nevertheless still think more with inner speech than with mental images, and the more the participants reported thinking in inner speech, the more they evoked past and future events when describing a socially interactive and dynamic situation. Conclusions More autistic traits are associated with a limited diachronic tendency in socially interactive and dynamic situations and more thinking in mental images, and thinking style could be one of the determinants of diachronic tendency in socially interactive and dynamic situations.

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