Temperament and Sensitivity for Social and Non-Social Reward in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Background:  

Individuals with ASD were found to manifest activation abnormalities in brain regions involved in reward processing such as amygdala, orbito-frontal cortex and anterior cingulate (Bachavalier & Loveland,2006).  Moreover, reduced neural responses to social rewards in children with ASD were demonstrated in regions associated with reward processing (Scott- Van Zeeland et al., 2010).  On the other hand, personality dimensions are thought to reflect constitutionally based individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which influence the ways in which individuals respond to environmental changes. Temperament dimensions like eg. reward dependence (RD) were found to be related to regions that are involved in processing primary rewards (Lebreton et la., 2009). Recent studies on temperament dimensions in ASD found RD to be significantly decreased in both children and adults with ASD (Poustka et al., 2011; Anckarsäter et al., 2006).  

Objectives:  

To address the question of the relationship of temperament dimensions and brain responses to different magnitudes of social and non -social reward in ASD.

Methods:  

15 male adolescents with ASD and 15 typically developing controls, matched for age and IQ , participated in an fMRI study using two similar incentive delay tasks winning either money (monetary incentive delay task, MID)  or social feedback (social incentive delay task, SID) . Both tasks consist of three conditions, 22 trials each. Potential gain depended on participants ability to hit a button in time whenever the cued target symbol appeared on the screen. Task difficulty was standardized to a hit rate of nearly 66% for all participants by adjusting target duration to individual reaction time. Temperament was assessed using Cloninger´s Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (JTCI

Results:  

We hypothesize that our findings will have an impact on a better understanding of the relationship of personality dimension as well as motivational aspects in ASD. These aspects are crucial for problems with self- and socially motivated behaviour and social interaction observed in ASD.

Conclusions:  

Results might illustrate the importance of considering individual variability in constructs like temperament, which  influence both adaptive functioning in children with ASD as well as possible success of intervention strategies.