Associative learning under uncertainty in adults with autism: Intact learning of the cue-outcome contingency, but slower updating of priors

We have an internal representation of the world that guides our behavior, helps us predicting what comes next and therefore, reducing uncertainty. For instance, after hearing the noise of a door opening, we usually expect to see a person appearing, whose features differ depending on the context. In this example of associative learning, predictions need to be adjusted if there is a change in the environment (e.g. different person depending on the location). Recent theories suggest that the symptoms encountered in autism could be due to an atypical learning of predictions or to a decreased influence of these expectations on perception. Here, we conducted an experiment assessing whether adults with autism could learn and adjust their predictions in a changing environment. Throughout a behavioral task, participants learned to associate a sound with a visual outcome, but this association could sometimes reverse. Results showed that autistic adults could learn to make predictions that fitted the main sound-vision association, but were slower to adapt their expectations when there was an unannounced change in the environment. We also observed that both adults with and without autism tended to be biased by their expectations, as they reported seeing what they expected to see rather than what was actually shown. Altogether, our results indicate that autistic adults can learn predictions but are more inflexible to adjust these predictions in a changing environment. These results help refining recent theories of autism (called "predictive coding" theories), which intend to identify the core mechanisms underlying the autistic symptomatology.

Jaar van publicatie:2022

BOF-keylabel:ja

IOF-keylabel:ja

BOF-publication weight:6

CSS-citation score:2

Auteurs:International

Authors from:Higher Education

Toegankelijkheid:Closed