↓ Skip to main content

Enhanced social learning of threat in adults with autism

Overview of attention for article published in Molecular Autism, September 2020
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (67th percentile)
  • Average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source

Mentioned by

twitter
8 X users

Citations

dimensions_citation
9 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
77 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Enhanced social learning of threat in adults with autism
Published in
Molecular Autism, September 2020
DOI 10.1186/s13229-020-00375-w
Pubmed ID
Authors

Lisa Espinosa, Johan Lundin Kleberg, Björn Hofvander, Steve Berggren, Sven Bölte, Andreas Olsson

Abstract

Recent theories have linked autism to challenges in prediction learning and social cognition. It is unknown, however, how autism affects learning about threats from others "demonstrators" through observation, which contains predictive learning based on social information. The aims of this study are therefore to investigate social fear learning in individual with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and to examine whether typically developing social cognition is necessary for successful observational learning. Adults with ASD (n = 23) and neurotypical controls (n = 25) completed a social fear learning (SFL) procedure in which participants watched a "demonstrator" receiving electrical shocks in conjunction with a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS+), but never with a safe control stimulus (CS-). Skin conductance was used to measure autonomic responses of learned threat responses to the CS+ versus CS-. Visual attention was measured during learning using eye tracking. To establish a non-social learning baseline, each participant also underwent a test of Pavlovian conditioning. During learning, individuals with ASD attended less to the demonstrator's face, and when later tested, displayed stronger observational, but not Pavlovian, autonomic indices of learning (skin conductance) compared to controls. In controls, both higher levels of attention to the demonstrator's face and trait empathy predicted diminished expressions of learning during test. The relatively small sample size of this study and the typical IQ range of the ASD group limit the generalizability of our findings to individuals with ASD in the average intellectual ability range. The enhanced social threat learning in individuals with ASD may be linked to difficulties using visual attention and mental state attributions to downregulate their emotion.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 8 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 77 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 77 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 13 17%
Student > Master 9 12%
Researcher 6 8%
Student > Bachelor 5 6%
Other 4 5%
Other 11 14%
Unknown 29 38%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 20 26%
Medicine and Dentistry 6 8%
Nursing and Health Professions 5 6%
Neuroscience 4 5%
Unspecified 2 3%
Other 7 9%
Unknown 33 43%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 October 2020.
All research outputs
#6,593,587
of 24,640,106 outputs
Outputs from Molecular Autism
#436
of 705 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#134,626
of 414,382 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Molecular Autism
#18
of 25 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,640,106 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 73rd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 705 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 28.4. This one is in the 38th percentile – i.e., 38% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 414,382 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 25 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.