32071
Individuals with Higher Levels of Autistic Traits Are Less Susceptible to Social Conformity on a Perceptual Decision-Making Task
Previous research on social influence processes in typically developing individuals has suggested that subjective social norms can influence individuals’ perceptual judgments, with group influence exerting an effect on judgments. The opinions of others seem to change an individual's perceptual judgment, which is thought to be an effect of conformity.
Key diagnostic criteria of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) include social impairment, such as reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect. Individuals with ASD also often have difficulty with theory of mind, including the ability to take on another’s perspective. Consequently, individuals with ASD may be expected to conform less than typically developing individuals due to the social difficulties inherent to ASD.
Objectives:
The current study seeks to examine susceptibility to social influence (i.e., conformity) in the context of a perceptual decision-making task in adults with high and low levels of autistic traits.
Methods:
Participants included 40 undergraduate students with normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Participants were asked to indicate the dominant color of squares consisting of 128 x 128 orange and blue pixels. Stimuli ranged from 40 percent to 60 percent orange pixels (e.g., 40% orange/60% blue to 60% orange/40% blue).
Participants first completed 40 trials in which they responded with no social pressure (Block 1). Participants then completed 102 trials (Block 2) in which the alleged responses of other participants were presented before stimulus onset on each trial. Responses were presented consecutively and separated by random delays between 1000 and 2000 ms. The responses of other participants were manipulated such that the majority response was correct for 80 percent of trials to induce social pressure.
Participants completed the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) following the computer task.
Results:
Overall accuracy was higher in Block 2 compared to Block 1, suggesting that the manipulation of social pressure was effective. For Block 2, preliminary analyses indicate a significant negative correlation between Total AQ scores and accuracy on hard-to-detect trials (with an orange/blue contrast of 49% / 51%) such that individuals with higher AQ scores (i.e., higher levels of autistic traits) performed less accurately (r = -.368, p= .019). There were no correlations between AQ scores and accuracy on easy-to-detect trials, when perhaps relying on either social information or perceptual abilities alone may have led to accurate responses.
Conclusions:
These results suggest that adults with higher levels of autistic traits utilize social information to a lesser extent and are perhaps less susceptible to social conformity, resulting in lower accuracy on very difficult trials of a visual perception task. Future work will explore this relationship in individuals on the autism spectrum in a similar experimental task.