Lack of Privileged Access to Awareness for Rewarding Social Scenes in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Not to follow because of distrust: perceived trust modulates the gaze cueing effect

In social life, people spontaneously form stable trustworthiness impressions from faces. However, the precise role of extracting trustworthiness information remains unclear. This study aims to elucidate whether discerning facial trustworthiness influences social interactions. Specifically, it explores the gaze cueing effect (GCE), wherein individuals exhibit quicker responses to targets appearing in the direction of gaze compared to other locations. Given conflicting perspectives in existing literature regarding the potential modulation of trustworthiness on the GCE, two plausible hypotheses are proposed to explain divergent result patterns. The reflexive hypothesis posits that the GCE operates automatically. In contrast, the flexible hypothesis underscores the potential modulatory role of trustworthiness in the GCE. To provide a comprehensive understanding of whether trustworthiness modulates the GCE, we employed face stimuli incorporating trustworthiness information within Posner' s cue-target task. The findings of Experiment 1 revealed that the perception of trustworthiness indeed influenced the GCE. Specifically, when facial stimuli were perceived as trustworthy, they elicited a more pronounced GCE compared to untrustworthy stimuli. This modulation effect was replicated using a different stimulus set in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, we employed the same stimuli as in Experiment 2, setting the trustworthiness information to baseline as a control experiment. The results demonstrated that the trustworthiness modulation effect disappeared, indicating its specificity to the trustworthiness attribute of the stimuli rather than other characteristics. Collectively, these findings lend support to the flexible hypothesis, highlighting that the extraction of trustworthiness information plays a pivotal role in modulating the GCE, consequently influencing social interactions.

Greater interpersonal distance in adults with autism

Social interactions are often shaped by the space we prefer to maintain between us and others, that is, interpersonal distance. Being too distant or too close to a stranger can often be perceived as odd, and lead to atypical social interactions. This calibration of appropriate interpersonal distance thus constitutes an important social skill. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, hereafter autism) often experience difficulties with this skill, and anecdotal accounts suggest atypical interpersonal distances in their social interactions. In the current study, we systematically measured interpersonal distance in individuals with autism using immersive virtual reality (IVR) to recreate a naturalistic interaction with a full body avatar of a similar age. Participants observed their own virtual body in first-person perspective, and the other avatar in two tasks: in the first task, they approached the other avatar (active), in the second one they were approached by the other avatar (passive). Two groups of neurotypical and autistic adults, performed both tasks. Autistic adults showed greater interpersonal distance when compared to non-autistic adults. Additionally, the difference between the passive and active conditions was smaller for non-autistic compared to autistic adults. Across the full sample, greater interpersonal distance was associated with higher autism-related traits. This study provides systematic evidence for greater interpersonal distance in autistic adults using a paradigm with high ecological validity and can be useful in informing the design of appropriate environmental adjustments for shared spaces.

How do humans group non-rigid objects in multiple object tracking?: Evidence from grouping by self-rotation

Previous studies on perceptual grouping found that people can use spatiotemporal and featural information to group spatially separated rigid objects into a unit while tracking moving objects. However, few studies have tested the role of objects' self-motion information in perceptual grouping, although it is of great significance to the motion perception in the three-dimensional space. In natural environments, objects always move in translation and rotation at the same time. The self-rotation of the objects seriously destroys objects' rigidity and topology, creates conflicting movement signals and results in crowding effects. Thus, this study sought to examine the specific role played by self-rotation information on grouping spatially separated non-rigid objects through a modified multiple object tracking (MOT) paradigm with self-rotating objects. Experiment 1 found that people could use self-rotation information to group spatially separated non-rigid objects, even though this information was deleterious for attentive tracking and irrelevant to the task requirements, and people seemed to use it strategically rather than automatically. Experiment 2 provided stronger evidence that this grouping advantage did come from the self-rotation per se rather than surface-level cues arising from self-rotation (e.g. similar 2D motion signals and common shapes). Experiment 3 changed the stimuli to more natural 3D cubes to strengthen the impression of self-rotation and again found that self-rotation improved grouping. Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that grouping by self-rotation and grouping by changing shape were statistically comparable but additive, suggesting that they were two different sources of the object information. Thus, grouping by self-rotation mainly benefited from the perceptual differences in motion flow fields rather than in deformation. Overall, this study is the first attempt to identify self-motion as a new feature that people can use to group objects in dynamic scenes and shed light on debates about what entities/units we group and what kinds of information about a target we process while tracking objects.

Keeping in time with social and non-social stimuli: Synchronisation with auditory, visual, and audio-visual cues

Everyday social interactions require us to closely monitor, predict, and synchronise our movements with those of an interacting partner. Experimental studies of social synchrony typically examine the social-cognitive outcomes associated with synchrony, such as affiliation. On the other hand, research on the sensorimotor aspects of synchronisation generally uses non-social stimuli (e.g. a moving dot). To date, the differences in sensorimotor aspects of synchronisation to social compared to non-social stimuli remain largely unknown. The present study aims to address this gap using a verbal response paradigm where participants were asked to synchronise a 'ba' response in time with social and non-social stimuli, which were presented auditorily, visually, or audio-visually combined. For social stimuli a video/audio recording of an actor performing the same verbal 'ba' response was presented, whereas for non-social stimuli a moving dot, an auditory metronome or both combined were presented. The impact of autistic traits on participants' synchronisation performance was examined using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Our results revealed more accurate synchronisation for social compared to non-social stimuli, suggesting that greater familiarity with and motivation in attending to social stimuli may enhance our ability to better predict and synchronise with them. Individuals with fewer autistic traits demonstrated greater social learning, as indexed through an improvement in synchronisation performance to social vs non-social stimuli across the experiment.

The Mediating Role of Impulsivity and the Moderating Role of Gender Between Fear of Missing Out and Gaming Disorder Among a Sample of Chinese University Students

The role of fear of missing out (FoMO) in addictive behaviors has recently attracted growing attention. In view of negative effects of gaming disorder (GD) among adolescents and emerging adults, research examining the relationship between FoMO and GD is needed, alongside the roles of impulsivity and gender in the relationship between FoMO and GD. This study examined whether impulsivity as a mediator and gender as a moderator impacted on the relationship between FoMO and GD among a sample of Chinese university students. A sample of 1,288 Chinese university students from three universities completed an online survey through the Wenjuanxing platform. The Chinese Trait-State Fear of Missing Out Scale, the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-Brief, and the Chinese Gaming Disorder Scale were used in this study. The model results indicated that impulsivity partially mediated the relationship between FoMO and GD, and that there was a larger effect size between impulsivity and GD among males. High levels of FoMO among individuals may impact on executive functions leading to more impulsivity, and are associated with GD. Gender may moderate the relationship between impulsivity and GD. This study deepens the understanding of the relationship between FoMO and GD, and provides new perspectives for practitioners to incorporate into health prevention programs to help regulate emotion, control impulsivity, and decrease GD.

Examining the value of body gestures in social reward contexts

Brain regions associated with the processing of tangible rewards (such as money, food, or sex) are also involved in anticipating social rewards and avoiding social punishment. To date, studies investigating the neural underpinnings of social reward have presented feedback via static or dynamic displays of faces to participants. However, research demonstrates that participants find another type of social stimulus, namely, biological motion, rewarding as well, and exert effort to engage with this type of stimulus. Here we examine whether feedback presented via body gestures in the absence of facial cues also acts as a rewarding stimulus and recruits reward-related brain regions. To achieve this, we investigated the neural underpinnings of anticipating social reward and avoiding social disapproval presented via gestures alone, using a social incentive delay task. As predicted, the anticipation of social reward and avoidance of social disapproval engaged reward-related brain regions, including the nucleus accumbens, in a manner similar to previous studies' reports of feedback presented via faces and money. This study provides the first evidence that human body motion alone engages brain regions associated with reward processing in a similar manner to other social (i.e. faces) and non-social (i.e. money) rewards. The findings advance our understanding of social motivation in human perception and behavior.