High autistic traits linked with reduced performance on affective task switching: An ERP study.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Affective flexibility is crucial for emotional regulation.
• Limited research exists on affective flexibility in individuals with high autistic traits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate affective flexibility in individuals with high autistic traits using an affective task-switching paradigm.
• To explore the neural underpinnings of affective flexibility using event-related potential (ERP) technology.

Main Methods:

• An affective task-switching paradigm was used with participants identifying gender and emotion of faces.
• Participants were divided into High Autistic Group (HAG) and Low Autistic Group (LAG) based on Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores.
• Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the task-switching procedure.

Main Results:

• The HAG showed greater behavioral emotion switch costs and altered N2 and P3 ERP components when switching to the emotion task.
• An affective asymmetric switch cost was observed in the HAG, with larger costs for the emotion task compared to the gender task.
• The LAG exhibited symmetrical switch costs, differing from the HAG's pattern.

Conclusions:

• Individuals with high autistic traits experience difficulties with affective flexibility, especially in emotional processing tasks.
• The observed affective asymmetric switch costs in the HAG differ from previous findings in autistic children and the general population.
• Task dominance between gender and emotion processing may shift with increasing autistic traits, potentially declining for emotion tasks.