标签存档： children

Zoë L. Hopkins； Nicola Yuill；Holly P. Branigan

In dialogue, speakers tend to imitate, or align with, a partner’s language choices. Higher levels of alignment facilitate communication and can be elicited by affiliation goals. Since autistic children have interaction and communication impairments, we investigated whether a failure to display affiliative language imitation contributes to their conversational difficulties. We measured autistic children’s lexical alignment with a partner, following an ostracism manipulation which induces affiliative motivation in typical adults and children. While autistic children demonstrated lexical alignment, we observed no affiliative influence on ostracised children’s tendency to align, relative to controls. Our results suggest that increased language imitation—a potentially valuable form of social adaptation—is unavailable to autistic children, which may reflect their impaired affective understanding.

在对话中，说话者倾向于模仿或配合对方的语言选择。较高程度的一致有助于交流，并可由从属目标激发。由于自闭症儿童有互动和交流障碍，我们研究了未能表现出附属语言模仿是否会导致他们的对话困难。我们测量了自闭症儿童与伙伴的词汇一致性，并采用了一种会诱发典型成人和儿童从属动机的排斥操作。虽然自闭症儿童表现出了词汇一致性，但与对照组相比，我们没有观察到从属关系对被排斥儿童的一致性倾向产生影响。我们的研究结果表明，自闭症儿童无法增加语言模仿–一种潜在的有价值的社会适应形式，这可能反映出他们的情感理解能力受损。

Adrian Hase ； Melanie Haynes ；Gregor Hasler

Deficits in socio-emotional reciprocity, in prosocial behavior and in developing social relationships are diagnostic criteria of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), usually assessed by self-report or observation. Simple social experiments developed by behavioral economists allow for quantification of ASD-related social behavior. In this study, we used such experiments to compare social-economic decision-making between ASD adolescents and neurotypical controls. Precisely, we analyzed social orienting and prosocial behavior in 17 adolescents with ASD (Asperger syndrome) and 24 matched neurotypical adolescents. We used a twocondition distribution game (possibility of punishment by fellow player versus no such possibility) and an impunity game to examine social orienting (distribution game) and prosocial behavior (both games). Participants with ASD exhibited less social orienting in the distribution game (p = 0.03, d = 0.61). In addition, there was a trend for ASD participants to behave in a more prosocial way than neurotypical participants in the impunity game (p = 0.08, d = 0.60), which was not the case in the no-punishment condition of the distribution game (p = 0.35, r = 0.17). These results demonstrate the potential of simple economic games to capture reduced social orienting in ASD. The unexpected finding of more prosocial behavior in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder than in neurotypical controls adds to the complexity of previously published results. We recommend metaanalytic efforts to determine average effect sizes across studies and elucidate the conditions for prosocial behavior in ASD to occur.

社会情感互惠、亲社会行为和发展社会关系方面的缺陷是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的诊断标准，通常通过自我报告或观察进行评估。行为经济学家开发的简单社会实验可以量化与 ASD 相关的社会行为。在本研究中，我们利用此类实验来比较 ASD 青少年和神经正常对照组之间的社会经济决策。确切地说，我们分析了 17 名患有 ASD（阿斯伯格综合症）的青少年和 24 名匹配的神经典型青少年的社会定向和亲社会行为。我们使用了一种双条件分配游戏（可能受到同伴惩罚与不可能受到惩罚）和一种有罪不罚游戏来研究社会定向（分配游戏）和亲社会行为（两种游戏）。患有 ASD 的参与者在分配游戏中表现出较低的社会导向性（p = 0.03，d = 0.61）。此外，与神经畸形参与者相比，ASD 参与者在有罪不罚游戏中的亲社会行为呈上升趋势（p = 0.08，d = 0.60），而在分配游戏的无惩罚条件下，情况并非如此（p = 0.35，r = 0.17）。这些结果表明，简单的经济游戏有可能捕捉到 ASD 社会定向力下降的情况。与神经畸形对照组相比，自闭症谱系障碍青少年的亲社会行为更多，这一意外发现增加了之前公布结果的复杂性。我们建议进行荟萃分析，以确定各项研究的平均效应大小，并阐明自闭症谱系障碍青少年亲社会行为发生的条件。

Florence Y. N. Leung, Vesna Stojanovik, Cunmei Jiang, Fang Liu

 Cumulating evidence suggests that atypical emotion processing in autism may generalize across different stimulus domains. However, this evidence comes from studies examining explicit emotion recognition. It remains unclear whether domain-general atypicality also applies to implicit emotion processing in autism and its implication for real-world social communication. To investigate this, we employed a novel cross-modal emotional priming task to assess implicit emotion processing of spoken/sung words (primes) through their influence on subsequent emotional judgment of faces/face-like objects (targets). We assessed whether implicit emotional priming differed between 38 autistic and 38 neurotypical individuals across age groups as a function of prime and target type. Results indicated no overall group differences across age groups, prime types, and target types. However, differential, domain-specific developmental patterns emerged for the autism and neurotypical groups. For neurotypical individuals, speech but not song primed the emotional judgment of faces across ages. This speech-orienting tendency was not observed across ages in the autism group, as priming of speech on faces was not seen in autistic adults. These results outline the importance of the delicate weighting between speech- versus song-orientation in implicit emotion processing throughout development, providing more nuanced insights into the emotion processing profile of autistic individuals.

不断积累的证据表明，自闭症患者的非典型情绪处理可能会在不同的刺激领域普遍存在。然而，这些证据来自于对显性情绪识别的研究。至于自闭症患者的内隐情绪处理是否也会出现领域泛化的不典型性及其对现实世界社交沟通的影响，目前仍不清楚。为了探究这个问题，我们采用了一种新颖的跨模态情绪引物任务，通过影响随后对人脸/类似人脸的物体（目标）的情绪判断，来评估口语/唱歌词（引物）的内隐情绪加工。我们评估了不同年龄组的 38 名自闭症患者和 38 名神经畸形患者的内隐情绪引物是否因引物和目标物类型而有所不同。结果表明，不同年龄组、素材类型和目标类型之间没有整体的群体差异。然而，自闭症群体和神经症群体出现了不同的、特定领域的发展模式。对于神经症患者来说，在不同年龄段，语音而非歌曲会引发对人脸的情感判断。在自闭症群体中，不同年龄段的人并没有观察到这种语音导向的倾向，因为在自闭症成人中没有看到语音对人脸的引导作用。这些结果概述了在整个发育过程中，内隐情绪处理中语音导向与歌曲导向之间微妙权重的重要性，从而为了解自闭症患者的情绪处理特征提供了更细致入微的见解。

Yanru Chen & Laudan B. Jahromi

Children with autism spectrum disorder often demonstrate self-regulation challenges and academic difficulties. Although self-regulation has been well documented as an important factor for academic achievement in neurotypical children, little is known about how it is related to academic learning in autistic children, especially during preschool, a critical developmental period for both emergent academic skills and self-regulatory abilities. It is also unclear whether school engagement or autism characteristics influence the relation between self-regulation and academic learning in autistic children during preschool. Thirty-two autistic preschoolers participated in this study. Direct measures and parent reports were used to measure three dimensions of self-regulation, including executive function, effortful control, and emotion regulation. Classroom-based data from multiple academic programs were used to reflect their average rates of achieving new literacy and mathematics learning goals. Teachers reported the participants’ levels of school engagement, and their autism characteristics were measured directly. Emotion regulation was significantly linked to the rate of meeting literacy learning goals in autistic preschoolers, whereas multiple executive function skills, including inhibitory and attentional control and working memory, were associated with their mathematics learning rate. Emotion regulation demonstrated a stronger association with literacy learning when autistic children were more engaged in classroom activities. Levels of autism characteristics did not mediate or moderate the association between self-regulation and academic learning. Future interventions and teaching should consider fostering self-regulation and facilitating school engagement for autistic preschoolers besides targeting their learning performance on specific academic content to promote their current and future academic success.

患有自闭症谱系障碍的儿童常常表现出自我调节方面的挑战和学业困难。尽管自我调节作为神经畸形儿童学业成绩的重要因素已被充分证明，但人们对自闭症儿童的自我调节与学业学习之间的关系却知之甚少，尤其是在学龄前阶段，因为学龄前阶段是学习技能和自我调节能力发展的关键时期。学校参与或自闭症特征是否会影响学龄前自闭症儿童自我调节与学业学习之间的关系，目前也尚不清楚。32 名学龄前自闭症儿童参与了本研究。研究采用直接测量法和家长报告来测量自我调节的三个维度，包括执行功能、努力控制和情绪调节。来自多个学术项目的课堂数据被用来反映他们实现新的识字和数学学习目标的平均比率。教师报告了参与者的学校参与程度，并直接测量了他们的自闭症特征。情绪调节与自闭症学龄前儿童达到识字学习目标的比率有明显联系，而多种执行功能技能（包括抑制和注意力控制以及工作记忆）则与他们的数学学习比率有关。当自闭症儿童更多地参与课堂活动时，情绪调节与识字学习的关系更为密切。自闭症特征的水平并不能调节或缓和自我调节与学业学习之间的关系。未来的干预和教学除了针对自闭症学龄前儿童在特定学业内容上的学习表现外，还应考虑培养他们的自我调节能力和促进他们参与学校活动，以促进他们当前和未来的学业成功。