Oxytocin modulation of resting-state functional connectivity network topology in individuals with higher autistic traits

BackgroundPeople with high subthreshold autistic traits usually share behavioral patterns similar to those of individuals on the autism spectrum, but with fewer social and cognitive changes. The effect of autistic traits on time perception and the role of interpersonal information in this effect remain unexplored.MethodsThis study used a temporal bisection task between 400 and 1600 ms to compare the time perception of individuals with higher and lower autistic traits, and to explore the regulation of interpersonal information on their time perception by establishing associations between identities and geometric shapes. Thirty-two participants with high autistic traits and thirty-one participants with low autistic traits participated in this study.ResultsIn the absence of identity information, people with high autistic traits tended to judge short durations as longer. Their subjective bisection point was lower, and the Weber ratio was higher than for those with low autistic traits, suggesting that their overestimation of short duration was due to decreased temporal sensitivity. With the involvement of interpersonal information, the proportion of long responses for no identity was significantly lower than for self, friends, and strangers, which seemed more obvious in individuals with low autistic traits although there was no significant interaction between identity and group. The Weber ratio of no identity was lower than that for other identities.ConclusionThe results suggest that individuals with high autistic traits have more conservative responses that are relatively shorter in duration, and this change is related to a decline in perceptual sensitivity. Compared to individuals with high autistic traits, the time perception of individuals with low autistic traits seemed more susceptible to interpersonal information.

Abnormal negative feedback processing in individuals with autistic traits in the Iowa gambling task: Evidence from behavior and event-related potentials

Phenotypic similarities exist between autism-related experiences and anxiety (especially social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder [OCD]), making it difficult for autistic people to self-report their experiences using existing measures developed for nonautistic adults. We examined whether clarifications aiming to tease out autism-related experiences from social anxiety or OCD in self-report questionnaires would influence autistic and nonautistic participants' ratings. Two autistic consultants and two experienced clinicians were consulted to develop item clarifications aiming to disentangle autistic from anxiety experiences for two questionnaires: the Social Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) and the Padua Inventory (PI) for OCD. Autistic adults (n = 50) and nonautistic university students with higher (n = 81) and lower autistic traits (ATs; n = 104) completed the original questionnaire followed by the clarified questionnaire items online. For social anxiety, there were few significant differences between the original and clarified item and total SAQ scores. For OCD, participants reported significantly lower scores for the OCD-clarified PI items than for the original items and the autism-clarified items. Larger original-clarified PI mean item differences were noted in items describing repetitive behaviors, "obsessional" thoughts, and contamination fears. Similar patterns of differences were found in autistic and nonautistic participants with higher and lower ATs, but differences were often larger in the autistic group. The SAQ in its original form appears to be an appropriate measure for autistic people to self-report social anxiety. However, autistic people appeared to complete the original PI items to reflect, to some extent, their autism-related experiences, rather than the originally intended OCD symptoms. Thus, the original OCD self-report ratings were inflated using the PI. Professionals should therefore clarify the intended meanings of different items of the PI to ensure more accurate and relevant ratings of OCD symptoms in autistic people. Why was this study done?: Autistic people and people with higher autistic traits (ATs) often experience higher rates of anxiety. Anxiety measures developed for the general population may not be appropriate or accurate for measuring anxiety in autistic people. We investigated whether clarifying items in existing self-report questionnaires to tease out anxiety from autistic experiences would influence the way autistic adults self-report their social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, and if so in what ways. We also wanted to know whether providing these item clarifications would affect the ratings of nonautistic individuals with varying rates of ATs to the same extent.What did the researchers do?: We initially consulted two autistic adults and two clinicians with experience working with autistic adults and co-occurring mental health difficulties. We selected two measures: the Social Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) for social anxiety symptoms and the Padua Inventory for OCD symptoms. The consultants identified social anxiety and OCD items that could be interpreted or experienced differently by autistic people and proposed ways to clarify them to make their meaning clearer.Next, 50 autistic people and 185 nonautistic university students participated in our online study. The nonautistic participants were grouped into those with higher or lower ATs. Participants completed the original social anxiety and OCD questionnaires first, followed by the clarified versions of the two questionnaires.What were the results of the study?: For social anxiety, we only found small differences in ratings when participants used measures with or without clarifications. This was true in both autistic and nonautistic participants. For OCD symptoms, autistic people's OCD ratings were significantly lower for many items after we provided clarifications, especially for items describing repetitive behaviors, "obsessional" thoughts, and contamination fears. This finding suggests that in the original questionnaire, autistic people may have also been rating their autism-related experiences, not just the OCD experiences or symptoms the questionnaire was trying to measure. We found similar differences between the original and clarified item ratings in nonautistic participants with higher and lower ATs. However, the differences were more common and pronounced with the autistic participants.What do these findings add to what was already known?: These findings suggest that original self-report measures of anxiety may need to be clarified so that autistic adults can better capture and rate their anxiety, rather than their autism-related experiences.What are potential weaknesses in the study?: We used only two anxiety questionnaires, so these findings may or may not be applicable to other OCD or social anxiety questionnaires available. Also, the clarifications we provided may not be representative of all autistic people's experiences, and it is possible that there are other and better ways to clarify the items. We also conducted many item comparisons in this study, so there is a possibility that some findings were due to chance.How will these findings help autistic adults now or in the future?: Our findings can help improve clinical interviews and use of anxiety questionnaires by making them more accurate. They can also help clinicians appreciate the importance of asking clarifying questions to ensure they better capture autistic adults' anxiety experiences.

The relationship between autistic traits and the stress of social isolation: Development of an explanatory model

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show an enhanced response to stressors, and gender plays an important role in stress response. Thus, autistic traits (ATs) in the general population and gender may regulate the emotion changes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present study, participants were divided into higher and lower ATs groups. The generalized linear models were used to estimate the effects of the independent variables (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic status (before, during), gender (male, female), and AT groups (higher ATs, lower ATs) and their interactions on emotions measured by the Positive and Negative Affect scales. The results showed that the COVID-19 pandemic reduced positive emotions and increased fear and anger. Furthermore, compared with the status before the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals with higher ATs and females experienced stronger anger and fear than individuals with lower ATs and males during the pandemic. The present study revealed the emotional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and greater emotional susceptibility to the pandemic among individuals with higher ATs and females. Our findings provide prospective evidence for understanding the ASD/ATs-related enhanced response to pathogen threat-related stressors and have implications for COVID-19 crisis interventions.

Exploring the impact of autistic traits and anxiety on visual attentional response to angry faces in adults with high autistic traits: An eye-movement study

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might have similar problems as in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and show impairment in social behaviour. Also, there is a relationship between social relationship skills and ToM (theory of mind) skills of children with ADHD. Besides, ASD is associated with prenatal exposure to high levels of androgens, and oxytocin plays a role in the modulation of emotions, coping with stress, and social behaviour like ASD. In this study, the relationship between autistic traits and serum oxytocin, testosterone, and androstenedione levels in prepubertal male drug naive children with ADHD has been investigated. Eighty-three prepubertal children, who were diagnosed with ADHD between the ages of 6-10years old, are included in the study. For the study, intelligence levels were evaluated by using WISC-4, and autistic traits were measured by using both social responsiveness scale and theory of mind tests. In addition, serum oxytocin, testosterone, and androstenedione levels were measured by using ELISA. It has been found that serum testosterone levels of patients with lower autistic traits are significantly lower than those with moderate and severe autistic traits, while the serum oxytocin levels are significantly higher. Also, patients with severe autistic traits have had significantly higher serum androstenedione levels than those with lower and moderate autistic traits. This study suggests that patients who have higher autistic traits have elevated testosterone and androstenedione levels and lower serum oxytocin levels. Further studies are needed to clarify this relationship.

BackgroundJoint attention skills are impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recently, varying degrees of autistic social attention deficit have been detected in the general population. We investigated gaze-triggered attention in individuals with high and low levels of autistic traits under visual–auditory cross-modal conditions, which are more sensitive to social attention deficits than unimodal paradigms.MethodsSixty-six typically developing adults were divided into low- and high-autistic-trait groups according to scores on the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) questionnaire. We examined gaze-triggered attention under visual–auditory cross-modal conditions. Two sounds (a social voice and a non-social tone) were manipulated as targets to infer the relationship between the cue and the target. Two types of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) conditions (a shorter 200-ms SOA and a longer 800-ms SOA) were used to directly test the effect of gaze cues on the detection of a sound target across different temporal intervals.ResultsIndividuals with high autistic traits (high-AQ group) did not differ from those with low autistic traits (low-AQ group) with respect to gaze-triggered attention when voices or tones were used as targets under the shorter SOA condition. In contrast, under the longer SOA condition, gaze-triggered attention was not observed in response to tonal targets among individuals in the high-AQ group, whereas it was observed among individuals in the low-AQ group. The results demonstrated that cross-modal gaze-triggered attention is short-lived in individuals with high autistic traits.ConclusionsThis finding provides insight into the cross-modal joint attention function among individuals along the autism spectrum from low autistic traits to ASD and may further our understanding of social behaviours among individuals at different places along the autistic trait continuum.

Growing evidence indicates that the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are distributed throughout the general population; hence, understanding the correlates of aging in people with high autistic traits could shed light on ASD and aging. 915 members of the Dunedin longitudinal birth cohort completed a measure of autistic traits at age 45. A composite measure of the "pace of aging" was derived by tracking the decline in 19 biomarkers across ages 26, 32, 38, and 45 years. Facial age was also assessed. Reports of perceived health were collected from participants themselves, informants, and interviewers. Higher self-reported autistic traits significantly correlated with a faster pace of aging, older facial age, and poorer self-, informant-, and interviewer-rated health. After control for sex, SES and IQ, autistic traits were significantly associated with each variable: pace of aging (β=0.09), facial age (β=0.08), self- (β=-0.15), informant (β=-0.12), and interviewer-rated (β=-0.17) health. Autistic traits measured at age 45 are associated with faster aging. Participants with high autistic traits appear to be more vulnerable to poor health outcomes, as previously reported for those clinically diagnosed with ASD. Therefore, autistic traits may have important health implications. Replicating these findings in samples of autistic people is needed to identify the mechanism of their effect on aging and physical health to improve outcomes for those with ASD diagnoses or high autistic traits. LAY SUMMARY: The role that autistic traits have in relation to health outcomes has not been investigated. We looked at how physical health and aging (measured with self-reported questions and decline in multiple biological measures) were related to autistic traits (measured with a questionnaire, at age 45). We found that higher autistic traits were associated with poorer reports of physical health, and a faster pace of aging. This suggests that both those with autism and those with higher autistic traits may be more likely to experience poorer health outcomes.

In light of the new DSM-5 autism spectrum disorders diagnosis in which the autism spectrum reflects a group of neurodevelopmental disorders existing on a continuum from mild to severe expression of autistic traits, and recent empirical findings showing a continuous distribution of autistic traits in the general population, our voxel based morphometry study compares normal individuals with high autistic traits to normal individuals with low autistic traits. We hypothesize that normal individuals with high autistic traits in terms of empathizing and systemizing [high systemizing (HS)/low empathizing (LE)] share brain irregularities with individuals that fall within the clinical autism spectrum disorder. We find differences in several social brain network areas between our groups. Specifically, we find increased gray matter (GM) volume in the orbitofrontal cortex, the cuneus, the hippocampus and parahippocampus and reduced GM volume in the inferior temporal cortex, the insula, and the amygdala in our HS/LE individuals relative to our HE/LS (low autistic traits in terms of empathizing and systemizing) individuals.

While allowing for rapid recruitment of large samples, online research relies heavily on participants’ self-reports of neuropsychiatric traits, foregoing the clinical characterizations available in laboratory settings. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research is one example for which the clinical validity of such an approach remains elusive. Here we compared 56 adults with ASD recruited in person and evaluated by clinicians to matched samples of adults recruited through an online platform (Prolific; 56 with high autistic traits and 56 with low autistic traits) and evaluated via self-reported surveys. Despite having comparable self-reported autistic traits, the online high-trait group reported significantly more social anxiety and avoidant symptoms than in-person ASD participants. Within the in-person sample, there was no relationship between self-rated and clinician-rated autistic traits, suggesting they may capture different aspects of ASD. The groups also differed in their social tendencies during two decision-making tasks; the in-person ASD group was less perceptive of opportunities for social influence and acted less affiliative toward virtual characters. These findings highlight the need for a differentiation between clinically ascertained and trait-defined samples in autism research.

Attention atypicality is evident in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its broader phenotype with previous studies suggesting that in some cases participants can be more efficient at ignoring distracting irrelevant information. However, it is not clear to what extent this improved filtering capacity is driven by perceptual atypicality, such as local bias or atypical face processing, which is also sometimes reported in these populations. For instance, better ability to ignore the global aspect of a display could stem from a local perceptual bias rather than from improved distractor inhibition. To test whether distractor suppression per se, is associated with high expression of autistic traits, in the present study a large cohort of neurotypical participants (n = 218), in whom expression of autistic traits was assessed, performed two nonspatial attention selection tasks with different categories of stimuli (global/local and face/scene). Importantly, both tasks involved a conflict with one aspect of the stimuli designated as the target and the other designated as the distractor. Across the two experiments adults with high autistic traits were overall, better able to ignore distractors than adults with low autistic traits, irrespective of the type of perceptual processing involved. These results support the notion that autistic tendencies are associated with increased attention filtering (at least when target and distractor remain constant) which is not dependent on perceptual biases. Thus, future work in the broader autism phenotype should explicitly consider the effect played by attention mechanisms in this population. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1345-1355. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: In the present study, we show that neurotypical adults with high autistic traits are better able to avoid distraction from conspicuous (but completely irrelevant) distractors when told in advance to do so. This ability is not affected by the type of visual input (for instance, whether the distractor is a face or whether small rather than large letters should be reported). This finding could be important in better understanding the way attention is utilized in Autism.

Editor's evaluation: Oxytocin administration enhances pleasantness and neural responses to gentle stroking but not moderate pressure social touch by increasing peripheral concentrations

Author response: Oxytocin administration enhances pleasantness and neural responses to gentle stroking but not moderate pressure social touch by increasing peripheral concentrations

The present study sought to use a paradigm that allows the study of mental representations of observed actions. We investigated whether retrieval of observationally acquired stimulus-response bindings are impaired in participants with high (compared with low) autistic traits. In an extreme group comparison, participants with high versus low autistic traits worked through an observational SR binding and a standard SR binding task (to control for general deficits in cognitive performance). As expected, groups did not differ with regard to retrieval of transient bindings between stimuli and self-performed responses (standard SR binding & retrieval effects). Against our expectations, the same was true for the retrieval of observationally acquired SR bindings, which was of comparable magnitude in both high and low autistic trait groups. Bayes Factor analysis indicates that our evidence for this null finding has to be regarded as weak evidence. Our findings provide tentative evidence against the view that imitative effects are reduced (hypo-imitation) or increased (hyper-imitation) when autistic trait expression is high. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).