Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Dec 22:16:1046097.
doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2022.1046097. eCollection 2022.

Contributions of face processing, social anhedonia and mentalizing to the expression of social autistic-like traits

Johan F Pieslinger  1 , Joost Wiskerke  2 , Kajsa Igelström  1
Affiliations

Contributions of face processing, social anhedonia and mentalizing to the expression of social autistic-like traits

Johan F Pieslinger et al. Front Behav Neurosci. .

Abstract

Introduction: Quantitative autistic-like traits (QATs) are a constellation of traits that mirror those of clinical autism and are thought to share the same mechanisms as the condition. There is great interest in identifying the genetic and neurobiological basis of QATs, but progress is hindered by the composite nature of these clinically based constructs. Social QATs are defined according to the diagnostic criteria for autism, comprising multiple potential neural mechanisms that may contribute to varying degrees. The objective of this study was to decompose social QATs into more specific constructs, in line with the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). We chose constructs with trait-like properties and known or suggested significance for autistic social function: (1) social anhedonia, (2) prosopagnosia (face blindness), and (3) mentalizing (attributing mental states to images of eyes). We hypothesized that these constructs may all contribute to observed variance in social QATs.

Methods: We recruited 148 adults with a broad range of QATs (mean age 37.9 years, range 18-69; 50% female; 5.4% autistic) to an experimental behavioral study conducted online. We estimated social QATs using the social factor of the Comprehensive Autistic Traits Inventory. We used the Oxford Face Matching Task and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test to measure face matching ability and mentalizing, respectively. Social anhedonia traits were measured with the Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale, and prosopagnosic traits with the 20-item Prosopagnosia Index. A combination of frequentist and Bayesian statistics was used to test the social constructs as predictors of social QATs.

Results: We found that social anhedonic traits, prosopagnosic traits, and face matching performance were likely predictors of social QATs, whereas mentalizing showed limited contribution.

Conclusion: The findings support prosopagnosic and anhedonic traits, but not mentalizing deficits, as dimensional predictors of individual differences in social function across the autistic spectrum. Further, the study strongly suggests that social reward systems and face processing networks play significant and independent roles in autistic-like social function.

Keywords: anhedonia; autistic disorder; facial recognition; mentalization; phenotype; psychophysics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Illustration of the experiment flow and reasons for attrition or exclusion. Invitation of participants consisted of advertising a study on Prolific with a built-in visibility filter that was based on participation in a different experiment; thus, no interactions occurred between researchers and participants at this step. See section “Materials and methods” for quality control criteria for tasks and questionnaires. ACIPS, Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale; OFMT, Oxford Face Matching Task; PI20, 20-item Prosopagnosia Index; RMET, Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Accuracy, sensitivity, and response bias in the OFMT. (A) Distribution of overall accuracy in the OFMT across trial types and difficulties. (B) Accuracy difference between trial types. (C) Distribution of d′ values. (D) Average sensitivity (d′) (95% C.I.) as a function of difficulty. (E) Distribution of response biases. (F) Average (95% C.I.) response bias as a function of difficulty. ****P = 2.6 × 10–19.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Associations of social constructs with social QATs and diagnosed autism. Scatter plots show the partial correlations for social constructs, correcting for age, gender, ethnicity, and comorbidities. P-values are those of the individual coefficients; ns indicates that the model was not significant (full models are reported in Supplementary Tables 1–3 and in the section “Results”). (A) Social anhedonia quantified with the ACIPS; lower scores indicating higher anhedonia. (B) Prosopagnosic traits quantified with the PI20; higher scores correspond to higher prosopagnosia. (C) Face matching sensitivity quantified with the OFMT d′. (D) Face matching response bias quantified with the bias c in the OFMT. (E) Mentalizing measured with the RMET. (F) Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for prediction of autism diagnosis by the social constructs. ACIPS, Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale; OFMT, Oxford Face Matching Task; PI20, 20-item Prosopagnosia Index; RMET, Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Inclusion probabilities and posterior coefficients for Bayesian linear regressions. (A) Shows the first analysis, containing the ACIPS together with face matching sensitivity (d′) and bias (c). The upper panel shows inclusion probabilities. The lower panel shows posterior coefficients, illustrating the large effect sizes of social anhedonia (low ACIPS score) and a smaller contribution by d′. (B) Shows the second analysis, which included self-reported prosopagnosia (PI20) instead of objective face matching measures. ACIPS, Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale; BF, Bayes Factor; OFMT, Oxford Face Matching Task; PI20, 20-item Prosopagnosia Index.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Adams R. B., Jr., Rule N. O., Franklin R. G., Jr., Wang E., Stevenson M. T., Yoshikawa S., et al. (2010). Cross-cultural reading the mind in the eyes: An fMRI investigation. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 22 97–108. 10.1162/jocn.2009.21187 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Anwyl-Irvine A. L., Massonnié J., Flitton A., Kirkham N., Evershed J. K. (2020). Gorilla in our midst: An online behavioral experiment builder. Behav. Res. Methods 52 388–407. 10.3758/s13428-019-01237-x - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Avery S. N., VanDerKlok R. M., Heckers S., Blackford J. U. (2016). Impaired face recognition is associated with social inhibition. Psychiatry Res. 236 53–57. 10.1016/j.psychres.2015.12.035 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bang P., Igelström K. (2022). Relative importance of processing deficits in seven sensory modalities in predicting quantitative autistic traits in adults. Res. Sq. 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1642709/v2 - DOI
    1. Barkus E. (2021). The effects of anhedonia in social context. Curr. Behav. Neurosci. Rep. 8 77–89. 10.1007/s40473-021-00232-x - DOI

LinkOut - more resources