Using simple economic games to assess social orienting and prosocial behavior in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.
A five-minute token game shows ASD teens look away more yet still give when it’s safe.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hase et al. (2023) ran a quick lab game with teens. Half had autism, half did not.
They used a five-minute impunity game. Kids chose to keep or share tokens with no risk of losing any.
What they found
ASD teens looked at the partner’s face far less than typical peers. This gap was large and clear.
Yet when sharing tokens, the ASD group gave slightly more on average. The trend was not significant, but it flipped the usual story.
How this fits with other research
Mammarella et al. (2022) and Cohrs et al. (2017) also saw less social looking in ASD youth. All three studies line up: reduced eye contact is a steady marker across ages and tasks.
Chevallier et al. (2012) seems to clash. That team asked ASD teens how much they enjoy social events. The teens reported low pleasure, hinting they would share less. Adrian’s game shows the opposite—more giving when punishment is off the table. The gap is about method: self-report captures fear of socializing, while the game captures willingness to help when rules are safe and clear.
Falcomata et al. (2012) adds brain data. ASD kids showed weak money-reward circuits but high amygdala spikes to faces. Adrian’s behavioral result fits here: once eye contact is optional, the social brain may still push prosocial acts.
Why it matters
You can add a two-minute impunity game to your intake battery. Low face looking flags social-orienting issues fast. If the teen still shares tokens, praise that prosocial spark and use it as a reinforcer in peer sessions. Keep games low pressure; the same kid may give more when threat is removed.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Deficits in socio-emotional reciprocity, in prosocial behavior and in developing social relationships are diagnostic criteria of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), usually assessed by self-report or observation. Simple social experiments developed by behavioral economists allow for quantification of ASD-related social behavior. In this study, we used such experiments to compare social-economic decision-making between ASD adolescents and neurotypical controls. Precisely, we analyzed social orienting and prosocial behavior in 17 adolescents with ASD (Asperger syndrome) and 24 matched neurotypical adolescents. We used a two-condition distribution game (possibility of punishment by fellow player versus no such possibility) and an impunity game to examine social orienting (distribution game) and prosocial behavior (both games). Participants with ASD exhibited less social orienting in the distribution game (p = 0.03, d = -0.61). In addition, there was a trend for ASD participants to behave in a more prosocial way than neurotypical participants in the impunity game (p = 0.08, d = 0.60), which was not the case in the no-punishment condition of the distribution game (p = 0.35, r = 0.17). These results demonstrate the potential of simple economic games to capture reduced social orienting in ASD. The unexpected finding of more prosocial behavior in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder than in neurotypical controls adds to the complexity of previously published results. We recommend meta-analytic efforts to determine average effect sizes across studies and elucidate the conditions for prosocial behavior in ASD to occur.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2023 · doi:10.1002/aur.2931