title: Brief Report: A Comparison of the Preference for Viewing Social and Non-social Movies in Typical and Autistic Adolescents.
abstract: The recently proposed Social Motivation theory (Chevallier et al., Trends in cognitive sciences 16(4):231-239, 2012) suggests that social difficulties in Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) might be caused by a difference in the motivation to engage with other people. Here we compared adolescents with (N = 31) and without (N = 37) ASC on the Choose-a-Movie paradigm that measures the social seeking. The results showed a preference for viewing objects over smiling faces in ASC, which is in line with the theory of low social motivation. However, typical adolescents did not show any stimuli preferences, raising questions about developmental changes in social motivation. Age was found to play a significant role in moderating the choice behaviour of the participants. We discuss the implications of these findings in detail.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK. i.dubey@ucl.ac.uk.|Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK. i.dubey@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Indu
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dubey
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ropar
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.
authors.forename: Antonia F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: de C Hamilton
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009040:Motion Pictures; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Adolescents; Autism spectrum conditions (ASC); Choose-a-Movie (CAM) task; Social motivation; Social preference