Lack of privileged access to awareness for rewarding social scenes in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Reduced social motivation is hypothesised to underlie social behavioural symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The extent to which rewarding social stimuli are granted privileged access to awareness in ASD is currently unknown. We use continuous flash suppression to investigate whether individuals with and without ASD show privileged access to awareness for social over nonsocial rewarding scenes that are closely matched for stimulus features. Strong evidence for a privileged access to awareness for rewarding social over nonsocial scenes was observed in neurotypical adults. No such privileged access was seen in ASD individuals, and moderate support for the null model was noted. These results suggest that the purported deficits in social motivation in ASD may extend to early processing mechanisms

Adaptation and risk management

Many of the existing tensions about the application of risk management are between simplicity and complexity, and between predictability and uncertainty. Users undertaking adaptation assessments want access to simple and clear methods. However, simple methods are criticized as being unable to manage the range of situations in which they may be used. On the other hand, risk management guidance that tries to be flexible and comprehensive can become too complex. This is because the adaptation assessments themselves can range from being simple to encompassing the general class of wicked problems, 70 characterized by multiple drivers of stress, significant uncertainties and contested values that cannot easily be resolved

Sympathetic involvement in time-constrained sequential foraging

Appraising sequential offers relative to an unknown future opportunity and a time cost requires an optimization policy that draws on a learned estimate of an environment’s richness. Converging evidence points to a learning asymmetry, whereby estimates of this richness update with a bias toward integrating positive information. We replicate this bias in a sequential foraging (prey selection) task and probe associated activation within the sympathetic branch of the autonomic system, using trial-by-trial measures of simultaneously recorded cardiac autonomic physiology. We reveal a unique adaptive role for the sympathetic branch in learning. It was specifically associated with adaptation to a deteriorating environment: it correlated with both the rate of negative information integration in belief estimates and downward changes in moment-to-moment environmental richness, and was predictive of optimal performance on the task. The findings are consistent with a framework whereby autonomic function supports the learning demands of prey selection

Lessons learnt from a participatory integrated assessment of greenhouse gas emission reduction options in firms

Participatory integrated assessment, Climate change policy, Stakeholder involvement, Methodology, Agriculture,