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Individual differences in autism-like traits are associated with reduced goal emulation in a computational model of observational learning

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Abstract

The ability to infer the goals and intentions of others is crucial for social interactions, and such social capabilities are broadly distributed across individuals. Autism-like traits (that is, traits associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)) have been associated with reduced social inference, yet the underlying computational principles and social cognitive processes are not well characterized. Here we tackle this problem by investigating inference during social learning through computational modeling in two large cross-sectional samples of adult participants from the general population (N1 = 943, N2 = 352). Autism-like traits were extracted and isolated from other associated symptom dimensions through a factor analysis of the Social Responsiveness Scale. Participants completed an observational learning task to quantify the tradeoff between two social learning strategies: imitation (repeating the observed partner’s most recent action) and emulation (inferring the observed partner’s goal). Autism-like traits were associated with reduced observational learning specifically through reduced emulation (but not imitation), revealing difficulties in social goal inference (Pearson’s r = −0.124, P < 0.001). This association held, even when controlling for other model parameters (for example, decision noise, heuristics, F1,925 = 15.352, P < 0.001), and was specifically related to social difficulties in autism-like traits (F1,916 = 33.169, P < 0.001) but not social anxiety traits (F1,916 = 0.005, P = 0.945). The findings, replicated in an additional sample, provide a powerfully specific mechanistic hypothesis for social learning challenges in ASD, employing a computational psychiatry approach that could be applied to other disorders.

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Fig. 1: Task design and behavioral signatures.
Fig. 2: Individual phenotyping using computational models.
Fig. 3: Factor analysis on the SRS questionnaire items.
Fig. 4: Associations between OL emulation and autism-like traits.
Fig. 5: Predicting autism-like traits from OL emulation.
Fig. 6: Predicting OL emulation from autism-like traits.

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Data availability

All raw data and curated data spreadsheets are publicly available at https://osf.io/j5npu/ and https://github.com/wuqy052/ASD_ObsLearn.

Code availability

All codes for the experiment, as well as analysis scripts, can be found online at https://github.com/wuqy052/ASD_ObsLearn.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funding from the NIMH R21MH120805 to J.P.O. and K99MH123669 to C.J.C., and the NIMH Caltech Conte Center on the Neurobiology of Social Decision-Making (P50MH094258 to J.P.O.) as well as by Caltech’s T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience (to J.P.O.). Q.W. was funded in part by a grant from the Simons Foundation Autism Initiative to R. Adolphs, and by Caltech’s T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience. We thank R. Adolphs for his helpful comments on the paper.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors jointly supervised this work: John P. O’Doherty, Caroline J. Charpentier.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Qianying Wu, Sarah Oh, Reza Tadayonnejad, John P. O’Doherty & Caroline J. Charpentier

  2. Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Sarah Oh

  3. Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Reza Tadayonnejad & Jamie D. Feusner

  4. Department of Psychiatry, Division of Neurosciences and Clinical Translation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Jamie D. Feusner

  5. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Canada

    Jamie D. Feusner

  6. Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

    Jamie D. Feusner

  7. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Jeffrey Cockburn

  8. Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Caroline J. Charpentier

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  1. Qianying Wu
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Contributions

Study conceptualization was provided by Q.W., R.T., J.D.F., J.C., J.P.O. and C.J.C. Task design was implemented by S.O., J.C., J.P.O. and C.J.C. Data collection and curation were carried out by Q.W., S.O., J.C. and C.J.C. The conceptualization of the computational models was provided by Q.W., J.C., J.P.O. and C.J.C. Data analyses were performed by Q.W., S.O. and C.J.C. The original draft was written by Q.W. and C.J.C. Review and editing were carried out by Q.W., S.O., R.T., J.D.F., J.C., J.P.O. and C.J.C. J.P.O. and C.J.C. jointly supervised the work. Funding acquisition was carried out by J.D.F., J.C., J.P.O. and C.J.C.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qianying Wu.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Mental Health thanks Leonhard Schilbach and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Participants inclusion pipeline.

Flow diagram showing the number of participants included/excluded at each recruitment and analysis step. *for all the exclusion criteria, check Supplementary Method 2.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Visualization of the clusters in the model-fitting feature space.

The distribution of individual model fitting diagnostics across each sample, shown as scatter plots for every pair of model-fitting diagnostics used as clustering dimensions. Colors represent four strategy groups. R2 Imitation: pseudo R2 of the imitation model, R2 NonLearn: pseudo R2 of the non-learning model, R2 Emulation: pseudo R2 of the emulation model, R2 Fix-Single: difference between the pseudo R2 of the fixed mixture model and the better single strategy model (imitation or emulation), R2 Dyn-Fix: difference between the pseudo R2 of the dynamic arbitration model and the fixed mixture model.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Exploratory factor analysis of SRS item data.

(a) Parallel analysis on the discovery sample. The optimal number of factors is 8, determined by the maximum number before the scree plots from the actual data and resampled simulated data intersect. (b) Cumulative variance explained by each factor. Factors were sorted in descending order of their explained variance.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Loadings of SRS Items on factors.

Loading strength of each of the 65 SRS items on each of the 8 factors. Orange indicates positive loadings, and blue indicates negative loadings. The color intensity is proportional to the loading strength. The number before each statement corresponds to the item index from the SRS-2 ASR questionnaire.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Correlations between arbitration diagnostics and autism-like traits.

(a) Correlation between arbitration propensity and factor 1 score. Discovery sample: N = 943, Pearson’s r = −0.016, p = 0.629, two-tailed; replication sample: N = 352, Pearson’s r = −0.012, p = 0.819, two-tailed. (b) Correlation between uncertainty weight parameter η and factor 1 score. Discovery sample: N = 943, Pearson’s r = −0.031, p = 0.343, two-tailed; replication sample: N = 352, Pearson’s r = −0.018, p = 0.733, two-tailed. Error bands represent the 95% confidence interval.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Comparison between AIC-based clustering and unsupervised clustering approaches.

The ‘Lowest AIC Approach’ classifies individuals using a fixed boundary. The ‘Unsupervised Clustering’ represents our current data-driven subject clustering approach, which does not have a hard boundary between groups, but clusters individuals based on the cosine distance of dimension values in a high-dimensional space. The top right (green) cluster is a separate subject group (Group 3) in the latter approach but is split into two other groups (Group 1, Group 2) in the former approach.

Extended Data Table 1 Sample demographic information
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Summary of model fits
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods 1–7, Results 1–6, Discussions 1–3, Figs. 1–9, Tables 1 and 2, and References.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Table 2

Table S2. SRS factor analysis results. Loadings of each item on their corresponding factors, ranked by the magnitude of the loadings within each factor. An item is considered as part of a factor if its loading on this particular factor is the largest among all factors, and the loading is more than 0.3. MOT, social motivation; AWR, social awareness; RRB, restricted interests and repetitive behaviors; COG, social cognition; COM, social communication.

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Wu, Q., Oh, S., Tadayonnejad, R. et al. Individual differences in autism-like traits are associated with reduced goal emulation in a computational model of observational learning. Nat. Mental Health 2, 1032–1044 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00287-1

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