Right amygdala and caudate activation patterns predict implicit attitudes toward people with autism spectrum disorders and physical disabilities, respectively.

Abstract

Attitudes toward people with disabilities tend to be negative, regardless of the visibility of the disorder traits. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience stigmatization that is rooted in negative attitudes or prejudice toward them because of their social awkwardness. The neural underpinnings of attitudes toward people with disabilities remain unclear. In this study, we focused on implicit attitudes toward people with ASD and physical disabilities, which are more visible than ASD, and investigated whether implicit attitudes were predicted by using neural activity with multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) in the prejudice network. Thirty-six, right-handed, Japanese, university students without disabilities participated. Two implicit association tests (IAT) toward people with ASD and physical disabilities revealed negative implicit attitudes. In the MRI scanner, participants performed a one-back task by using the same picture sets of IATs to examine their neural responses toward people with ASD and physical disabilities. According to the MVPA results, activation patterns of the right amygdala and right caudate significantly predicted implicit attitudes toward people with ASD and physical disabilities, respectively. These results suggest that implicit attitudes toward ASD and physical disabilities can be predicted by using neural signals from different regions within the prejudice network.