A Behavioral Economic Measure of Sensitivity to Social Rewards in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

It has been suggested that deviations from typical patterns of social behavior in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may stem from a failure to experience social interactions as sufficiently rewarding (Chevallier et al., 2012). This study evaluated a behavioral economic measure of sensitivity to social rewards in 30 autistic children, 19 nonautistic children with developmental disabilities, and 19 neurotypical children between the ages of 3 and 12 years old. Participants worked for 30 s of access to social interactions with a novel adult or a leisure item in separate sessions. Each reward was delivered on a progressive ratio schedule of reinforcement, in which the number of work responses required to access the reward increased across trials. Social reward was less valuable for autistic participants compared to their neurotypical peers, but differences in nonsocial reward value were not observed. No statistically significant differences in social reward value were obtained when comparing the nonautistic developmental disability group to either autism or neurotypical group. These findings suggest that differences in reward value may be unique to autism and isolated to social stimuli. Implications for future research investigating the role of social motivation in autism are discussed.