The social motivation theory of autism

The idea that social motivation deficits play a central role in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has recently gained increased interest. This constitutes a shift in autism research, which has traditionally focused more intensely on cognitive impairments, such as theory-of-mind deficits or executive dysfunction, and has granted comparatively less attention to motivational factors. This review delineates the concept of social motivation and capitalizes on recent findings in several research areas to provide an integrated account of social motivation at the behavioral, biological and evolutionary levels. We conclude that ASD can be construed as an extreme case of diminished social motivation and, as such, provides a powerful model to understand humans’ intrinsic drive to seek acceptance and avoid rejection. The idea that social motivation deficits play a central role in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has recently gained increased interest. This constitutes a shift in autism research, which has traditionally focused more intensely on cognitive impairments, such as theory-of-mind deficits or executive dysfunction, and has granted comparatively less attention to motivational factors. This review delineates the concept of social motivation and capitalizes on recent findings in several research areas to provide an integrated account of social motivation at the behavioral, biological and evolutionary levels. We conclude that ASD can be construed as an extreme case of diminished social motivation and, as such, provides a powerful model to understand humans’ intrinsic drive to seek acceptance and avoid rejection. refers to the influence of the presence of a spectator on a subject's performance or decisions. This classic effect in social psychology has received robust experimental support. Behavioral economists have demonstrated that the presence of others enhances participants’ generosity in a range of games, such as the dictator game, the ultimatum game, and the public good game. refers to the fact that extrinsic incentives, such as money, can undermine intrinsically motivated behaviors, such as altruistic behaviors. the capacity to attribute mental states to others and oneself in order to explain and predict behavior. ToM is an evolved psychological ability – most highly developed in humans – specialized in the rapid attribution of beliefs, intentions, desires or knowledge to others and oneself, and in the spontaneous understanding that others have mental states that may differ from one's own. reward has two dissociable psychological components: a ‘liking’ component, which refers to the hedonic value of rewards; and a ‘wanting’ component, which refers to the incentive salience of the reward (i.e. an incentive motivation promoting approach seeking and consumption of the reward) [10]. Because of the paucity of objective behavioral markers of ‘liking’ in humans, ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ are typically confounded in behavioral studies of reward (e.g. lip licking after the consumption of a sweet beverage is often used as a behavioral marker of ‘liking’ in the animal literature but this overt expression of pleasure fades out after infancy in humans). In this respect, neuroimaging is especially useful because it enables researchers to disentangle neural mechanisms that are associated with the anticipation of a reward cue and mechanisms that are associated with the consumption of that reward.