Tracking social motivation systems deficits: the affective neuroscience view of autism.
Low self-rated PLAYFULNESS may explain why some adults with autism avoid social contact—check this trait before writing social goals.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Carré et al. (2015) asked adults with autism and neurotypical adults to fill out short quizzes about their own personalities.
The quizzes came from affective-neuroscience research and measured traits like PLAYFULNESS, FEAR, and social anhedonia.
The team then compared the two groups and checked if higher autistic traits went hand-in-hand with certain personality scores.
What they found
Adults with autism rated themselves lower on PLAYFULNESS and higher on social anhedonia than neurotypical adults.
They also showed a unique mix of higher FEAR traits.
The lower the PLAYFULNESS score, the more social bonding problems the person reported.
How this fits with other research
Busch et al. (2010) watched children with autism play and saw the same thing: less high-level play predicted weaker social skills.
Woolard et al. (2021) later asked autistic adults about daily life and found that higher social anxiety and weaker executive function lined up with worse work and social ratings, extending the social-motivation story into everyday functioning.
Lim et al. (2016) interviewed emerging adults with autism and showed that those who practiced perspective-taking and leaned on friends had smoother transitions, supporting the idea that social traits stay important across age groups.
Why it matters
If a client says socializing feels like a chore, a quick PLAYFULNESS self-rating can tell you whether low social joy is part of the puzzle.
You can then add play-based or game-style activities to your plan to spark natural social contact instead of drilling isolated skills.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Abnormal functioning of primary brain systems that express and modulate basic emotional drives are increasingly considered to underlie mental disorders including autism spectrum disorders. We hypothesized that ASD are characterized by disruptions in the primary systems involved in the motivation for social bonding. Twenty adults with ASD were compared to 20 neurotypical participants on the basis of self-reports and clinical assessments, including the Social Anhedonia Scale (SAS) and the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS). ASD diagnosis was related to SAS, as well as to positive (PLAYFULNESS) and negative (FEAR) ANPS-traits. In the overall sample, levels of autistic traits (AQ) were related to SAS and PLAYFULNESS. We argue that PLAYFULNESS could be at the root of social bonding impairments in ASD.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2015 · doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2498-2