Compared to neurotypical peers, autistic adolescents show greater cognitive inflexibility (CI) which manifests at the behavioral and cognitive level and potentially increases vulnerability for the development of internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) symptoms. This systematic review and meta-analysis explored the association between CI and INT/EXT in autistic adolescents. PubMed, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Web of Science databases were searched to identify relevant studies until April 2022 (PROSPERO protocol: CRD42021277294). Systematic review included 21 studies (n = 1608) of CI and INT, and 15 studies (n = 1115) of CI and EXT. A pooled effect size using Pearson's correlation between CI and INT/EXT was calculated and the moderating effects of age, sex, IQ and study quality were investigated using meta-regressions. Sensitivity analyses were completed to investigate the impact of measure variance for CI and co-occurring ADHD on the overall effects. Greater CI is associated with increased INT (nine studies; n = 833; r = 0.39 (moderate effect), 95% confidence interval [0.32, 0.46]) and EXT (six studies; n = 295; r = 0.48 (large effect), 95% confidence interval [0.38, 0.58]). Results withheld when only using parental reports of CI and excluding autistic adolescents with co-occurring ADHD. Increased CI may be a transdiagnostic vulnerability factor that can increase autistic adolescents' rigid or perseverative patterns of unhelpful cognition and behaviors and reduce their ability to access psychological interventions. Addressing CI may improve autistic children and adolescents' engagement with psychological therapy for co-occurring mental health difficulties.
\n \n\n \n \nBACKGROUND: Social camouflaging (hereafter camouflaging) in autism includes factors such as masking and compensating for one's neurodevelopmental differences, and to assimilate or 'fit in' with non-autistic peers. Efforts to hide one's authentic self and autism traits (masking) resemble impression management (IM) in safety behaviours identified in Clark and Wells' (1995) cognitive model of social anxiety (SA). This study explores the relationship between camouflaging in autism and safety behaviours in SA among autistic and non-autistic adolescents. METHODS: One hundred fifteen adolescents (14-19\u2009years) with (n\u2009=\u200961; 36 female) and without (n\u2009=\u200954; 37 female) a clinical diagnosis of autism matched on age and SA symptom severity were recruited from clinics, schools and online. Adolescents completed online measures including autism traits, SA symptoms, camouflaging behaviours, SA-related safety behaviours and SA-related negative cognitions. Partial and bivariate Pearson's correlations and structural equation modelling were used to understand the relationship between camouflaging, safety behaviours, autism traits and SA in both groups. Exploratory factor analysis assessed item-level factor cross-loadings between camouflaging and safety behaviours. RESULTS: Across both groups, masking and IM were significantly associated with SA symptom severity, not autism traits, via SA-related social cognitions. Exploratory factor analysis indicated construct overlap across masking, assimilation, IM and avoidance behaviours and identified factors analogous to self-focused attention, social avoidance and mental rehearsal identified in the Clark and Wells' (1995) model of SA. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study using group-matched design to identify that masking (factor in social camouflaging) and IM both relate to SA in autistic and non-autistic adolescents. Assessment and formulation of construct overlap between masking and IM may inform psychoeducation and adaptation of SA treatment for autistic adolescents.
\n \n\n \n \nGiven the high co-occurrence of social anxiety in autism, no reviews to date have explored how cognitive and behavioural mechanisms identified to maintain social anxiety in non-autistic individuals may operate in autistic individuals. This systematic review evaluated: (1) empirical evidence underlying the Clark and Wells (1995) Cognitive Model of Social Anxiety in autistic individuals; (2) how vulnerability factors identified from autism literature (beyond core autistic traits) may be associated with social anxiety beyond the cognitive model. Published peer-reviewed English articles until 27th November 2023 were retrieved from PubMed, EMBASE, Ovid MEDLINE and PsycINFO. Quality appraisal and risk of bias were assessed using The Standard Quality Assessment Criteria for Evaluating Primary Research papers from a Variety of Fields tool. 47 articles met full inclusion criteria and included autistic individuals (with clinical diagnosis), a measure of social anxiety, and a mechanism outlined by either (or both) research questions. The majority of the 3340 participants across studies were male without intellectual disability, White/Caucasian, with 7 studies reporting an average age above 30 years old. Most studies used only self-report measures that may have inflated associations observed between social anxiety and mechanisms. All studies employed cross-sectional design, and no causality inferences could be drawn. Methodological issues around potential construct overlaps between social anxiety and autistic traits are highlighted. Overall, there is evidence in support of the as reported by Clark and Well (in: Heimberg (eds), A cognitive model of social phobia, The Guilford Press, 1995) model, as greater fear of negative evaluation from others, use of safety behaviours and somatic symptoms, and peer victimisation were associated with greater social anxiety. The review contributes evidence in support of autism specific contextual, predisposing/antecedent and maintenance factors of social anxiety beyond the original Clark and Well (in: Heimberg (eds), A cognitive model of social phobia, The Guilford Press, 1995) model. Given the potential for considerable heterogeneity for each highlighted process at an individual level across autistic individuals, clinicians can broaden formulation conversations with autistic clients to understand how autism related factors may influence the development and maintenance of social anxiety symptoms when applying and adapting the Clark and Well (in: Heimberg (eds), A cognitive model of social phobia, The Guilford Press, 1995) model.
\n \n\n \n \nSocial camouflaging or masking refers to strategies autistic individuals adopt to hide their autism persona when trying to fit in. It is unclear whether camouflaging is only applicable to social differences unique to autism, or more generally to any types of social difference, such as experiences of mental health difficulties. We asked 43 autistic and 39 non-autistic adolescents (aged 14-19\u2009years, all of whom showed similarly high levels of social anxiety) and their primary caregivers to complete questionnaires about their mental health (anxiety and depression) and autistic traits, and adolescents self-reported camouflaging behaviours. We wondered if camouflaging may be used to hide mental health difficulties reported by young people and affect caregiver report on symptom severity. We found that adolescents who self-reported greater levels of autistic traits, anxiety and depression symptoms compared with their caregivers reported greater camouflaging. Adolescents who agreed on having high levels of autistic traits and anxiety symptoms with their caregivers reported greater camouflaging behaviours. We discuss how having high levels of autistic traits and anxiety may increase adolescents' camouflaging behaviours to hide social differences, which may contribute towards poor mental health outcomes. We think it is important to talk with adolescents about how camouflaging social and mental health difference can have negative impacts for mental health as well as possible positive social gains.
\n \n\n \n \nThis study investigates how people assign blame to autonomous vehicles (AVs) when involved in an accident. Our experiment (N= 2647) revealed that people placed more blame on AVs than on human drivers when accident details were unspecified. To examine whether people assess major classes of blame-relevant information differently for AVs and humans, we developed a causal model and introduced a novel concept of prevention effort, which emerged as a crucial factor for blame judgement alongside intentionality. Finally, we addressed the \u201cmany hands\u201d problem by exploring how people assign blame to entities associated with AVs and human drivers, such as the car company or an accident victim. Our findings showed that people assigned high blame to these entities in scenarios involving AVs, but not with human drivers. This necessitates adapting a model of blame for AVs to include other agents and thus allow for blame allocation \u201coutside\u201d of autonomous vehicles.
\n \n\n \n \nAcross three studies, LoBue and DeLoache (2008) provided evidence suggesting that both young children and adults exhibit enhanced visual detection of evolutionarily relevant threat stimuli (as compared with nonthreatening stimuli). A replication of their Experiment 3, conducted by Cramblet Alvarez and Pipitone (2015) as part of the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P), demonstrated trends similar to those of the original study, but the effect sizes were smaller and not statistically significant. There were, however, some methodological differences (e.g., screen size) and sampling differences (the age of recruited children) between the original study and the RP:P replication study. Additionally, LoBue and DeLoache expressed concern over the choice of stimuli used in the RP:P replication. We sought to explore the possible moderating effects of these factors by conducting two new replications\u2014one using the protocol from the RP:P and the other using a revised protocol. We collected data at four sites, three in Serbia and one in the United States (total N = 553). Overall, participants were not significantly faster at detecting threatening stimuli. Thus, results were not supportive of the hypothesis that visual detection of evolutionarily relevant threat stimuli is enhanced in young children. The effect from the RP:P protocol (d = \u22120.10, 95% confidence interval = [\u22121.02, 0.82]) was similar to the effect from the revised protocol (d = \u22120.09, 95% confidence interval = [\u22120.33, 0.15]), and the results from both the RP:P and the revised protocols were more similar to those found by Cramblet Alvarez and Pipitone than to those found by LoBue and DeLoache.
\n \n\n \n \nReplication studies in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If these studies use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data-collection peer review by experts may address shortcomings and increase replicability rates. We selected 10 replication studies from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P; Open Science Collaboration, 2015) for which the original authors had expressed concerns about the replication designs before data collection; only one of these studies had yielded a statistically significant effect (p
\n \n\n \n \nIn the Human Penguin Project (N\u2009=\u20091755), 15 research groups from 12 countries collected body temperature, demographic variables, social network indices, seven widely-used psychological scales and two newly developed questionnaires (the Social Thermoregulation and Risk Avoidance Questionnaire (STRAQ-1) and the Kama Muta Frequency Scale (KAMF)). They were collected to investigate the relationship between environmental factors (e.g., geographical, climate etc.) and human behaviors, which is a long-standing inquiry in the scientific community. More specifically, the present project was designed to test principles surrounding the idea of social thermoregulation, which posits that social networks help people to regulate their core body temperature. The results showed that all scales in the current project have sufficient to good psychometrical properties. Unlike previous crowdsourced projects, this dataset includes not only the cleaned raw data but also all the validation of questionnaires in 9 different languages, thus providing a valuable resource for psychological scientists who are interested in cross-national, environment-human interaction studies.
\n \n\n \n \nWe comment on the proposition that lower temperatures and especially greater seasonal variation in temperature call for individuals and societies to adopt \u22ef a greater degree of self-control (Van Lange et al., sect. 3, para. 4) for which we cannot find empirical support in a large data set with data-driven analyses. After providing greater nuance in our theoretical review, we suggest that Van Lange et al. revisit their model with an eye toward the social determinants of self-control.
\n \n\n \n \nBinz et al. highlight the potential of meta-learning to greatly enhance the flexibility of AI algorithms, as well as to approximate human behavior more accurately than traditional learning methods. We wish to emphasize a basic problem that lies underneath these two objectives, and in turn suggest another perspective of the required notion of \"meta\" in meta-learning: knowing what to learn.
\n \n\n \n \nWhat makes cognition \"advanced\" is an open and not precisely defined question. One perspective involves increasing the complexity of associative learning, from conditioning to learning sequences of events (\"chaining\") to representing various cue combinations as \"chunks.\" Here we develop a weighted graph model to study the mechanism enabling chunking ability and the conditions for its evolution and success, based on the ecology of the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus. In some environments, cleaners must learn to serve visitor clients before resident clients, because a visitor leaves if not attended while a resident waits for service. This challenge has been captured in various versions of the ephemeral reward task, which has been proven difficult for a range of cognitively capable species. We show that chaining is the minimal requirement for solving this task in its common simplified laboratory format that involves repeated simultaneous exposure to an ephemeral and permanent food source. Adding ephemeral-ephemeral and permanent-permanent combinations, as cleaners face in the wild, requires individuals to have chunking abilities to solve the task. Importantly, chunking parameters need to be calibrated to ecological conditions in order to produce adaptive decisions. Thus, it is the fine-tuning of this ability, which may be the major target of selection during the evolution of advanced associative learning.
\n \n\n \n \nForaging is a complex and cognitively demanding behavior. Although it is often regarded as a mundane task, foraging requires the continuous weighting and integration of many sources of information with varying levels of credence. Bats are extremely diverse in their ecology and behavior, and thus demonstrate a wide variety of foraging strategies. In this review, we examine the different factors influencing the decision process of bats during foraging. Technological developments of recent years will soon enable real-time tracking of environmental conditions, of the position and quality of food items, the location of conspecifics, and the bat's movement history. Monitoring these variables alongside the continuous movement of the bat will facilitate the testing of different decision-making theories such as the use of reinforcement learning in wild free ranging bats and other animals.
\n \n\n \n \nLanguage is a cornerstone of human culture, yet the evolution of this cognitive-demanding ability is shrouded in mystery. Studying how different species demonstrate this trait can provide clues for its evolutionary route. Indeed, recent decades saw ample scientific attempts to compare human speech, the prominent behavioral manifestation of language, with other animals' vocalizations. Diligent studies have found only elementary parallels to speech in other animals, fortifying the belief that language is uniquely human. But have we really tested this uniqueness claim? Surprisingly, a true impartial comparison between human speech and other animals' vocalizations has hardly ever been conducted. Here, I illustrate how treating humans as an equal species in vocal-communication research is expected to provide us with no evidence for human superiority in this realm. Thus, novel balanced and unbiased comparative studies are vital for identifying any unique component of human speech and language.
\n \n\n \n \nFood sharing is often evolutionarily puzzling, because the provider's benefits are not always clear. Sharing among kin may increase indirect fitness [1], but when non-kin are involved, different mechanisms were suggested to act. Occasionally, \"tolerated theft\" [2, 3] is observed, merely because defending a resource is not cost effective. Sharing may also be explained as \"costly signaling\" [4, 5], where individuals signal their high qualities by distributing acquired resources, as has been suggested to occur in certain human cultures [6]. Alternatively, a transferred food item might be compensated for in later interactions [7]. In vampire bats, blood sharing reflects reciprocity between non-kin colony members [8-10], and long-term social bonds affect food sharing in chimpanzees [11]. Food may also be exchanged for other goods or social benefits [12-14]. One reciprocity-based explanation for intersexual food sharing is the food-for-sex hypothesis [15-17]. This hypothesis proposes that males share food with females in exchange for mating opportunities. Studies on human hunter-gatherer societies suggest that males with increased foraging success have higher reproductive success [18, 19]. Male chimpanzees, which in contrast to humans do not maintain pair bonds, were suggested to share food with females to increase their mating opportunities [16] (but see [20]). Bats, which are long-lived social mammals [21, 22], provide an opportunity to study long-term social reciprocity mechanisms. We monitored producer-scrounger interactions of a captive Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) colony for more than a year and genetically determined the paternity of the pups that were born in the colony. We found that females carry the young of males from which they used to scrounge food, supporting the food-for-sex hypothesis in this species.
\n \n\n \n \nCultural transmission facilitates the spread of behaviours within social groups and may lead to the establishment of stable traditions in both human and non-human animals. The fidelity of transmission is frequently emphasized as a core component of cultural evolution and as a prerequisite for cumulative culture. Fidelity is often considered a synonym of precise copying of observed behaviours. However, while precise copying guarantees reliable transmission in an ideal static world, it may be vulnerable to realistic variability in the actual environment. Here, we argue that fidelity may be more naturally achieved when the social learning mechanisms incorporate trial-and-error; and that the robustness of social transmission is thereby increased. We employed a simple model to demonstrate how culture that is produced through exact copying is fragile in an (even slightly) noisy world. When incorporating a certain degree of trial-and-error, however, cultures are more readily formed in a stochastic environment and are less vulnerable to rare ecological changes. We suggest that considering trial-and-error learning as a stabilizing component of social transmission may provide insights into cultural evolution in a realistic, variable, world.This article is part of the theme issue 'Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution'.
\n \n\n \n \nVocal learning, the substrate of human language acquisition, has rarely been described in other mammals. Often, group-specific vocal dialects in wild populations provide the main evidence for vocal learning. While social learning is often the most plausible explanation for these intergroup differences, it is usually impossible to exclude other driving factors, such as genetic or ecological backgrounds. Here, we show the formation of dialects through social vocal learning in fruit bats under controlled conditions. We raised 3 groups of pups in conditions mimicking their natural roosts. Namely, pups could hear their mothers' vocalizations but were also exposed to a manipulation playback. The vocalizations in the 3 playbacks mainly differed in their fundamental frequency. From the age of approximately 6 months and onwards, the pups demonstrated distinct dialects, where each group was biased towards its playback. We demonstrate the emergence of dialects through social learning in a mammalian model in a tightly controlled environment. Unlike in the extensively studied case of songbirds where specific tutors are imitated, we demonstrate that bats do not only learn their vocalizations directly from their mothers, but that they are actually influenced by the sounds of the entire crowd. This process, which we term \"crowd vocal learning,\" might be relevant to many other social animals such as cetaceans and pinnipeds.
\n \n\n \n \nAnimal acoustic communication research depends on our ability to record the vocal behaviour of different species. Only rarely do we have the opportunity to continuously follow the vocal behaviour of a group of individuals of the same species for a long period of time. Here, we provide a database of Egyptian fruit bat vocalizations, which were continuously recorded in the lab in several groups simultaneously for more than a year. The dataset includes almost 300,000 files, a few seconds each, containing social vocalizations and representing the complete vocal repertoire used by the bats in the experiment period. Around 90,000 files are annotated with details about the individuals involved in the vocal interactions, their behaviours and the context. Moreover, the data include the complete vocal ontogeny of pups, from birth to adulthood, in different conditions (e.g., isolated or in a group). We hope that this comprehensive database will stimulate studies that will enhance our understanding of bat, and mammal, social vocal communication.
\n \n\n \n \n