The Role Of Compensatory Processing And Feedback In Implicit Learning Of Individuals With High Autistic Trait

Implicit learning refers to the process by which individuals spontaneously acquire knowledge and skills through perception and experience,without explicit intention or consciousness.This mode of learning plays a crucial role in various domains,including language acquisition,emotional learning,social cognition,and interaction.Given this,impairments in implicit learning may potentially contribute to the core symptomatology of Autism Spectrum Disorders or individuals with high levels of autistic traits.However,previous research on whether individuals with high autistic traits exhibit deficits in implicit learning has yielded inconsistent findings.One possible explanation for this inconsistency is that high autistic trait individuals may compensate for their difficulties in implicit learning by adopting intentional learning strategies in implicit learning tasks,making potential deficits in implicit learning less observable.Another possible reason is that findings from studies focusing on nonsocial stimuli in implicit learning may not readily generalize to the processing of social stimuli.Meanwhile,although immediate feedback can enhance implicit learning to some extent,individuals with high autistic traits may exhibit atypical processing of feedback,raising the question of whether providing immediate feedback can more effectively facilitate implicit learning in this population.Further investigation is needed to explore this issue.Building upon this foundation,our research comprised three studies encompassing a total of ten experiments.These investigations aimed to explore whether individuals with high levels of autistic traits exhibit compensatory processing in both social and non-social implicit learning contexts.Additionally,we sought to elucidate the mechanisms underlying this compensatory processing and investigate the potential role of feedback.In Study 1,we employed two instructional conditions,memory and rule exploration,and used stimuli from both non-social and social domains.This study examined whether compensatory processing occurs in the knowledge representation of implicit learning.We also utilized near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate the potential neural underpinnings of these observed differences.Study 2 employed an adapted speech stream paradigm to separate measurements of implicit and explicit knowledge in implicit learning.This allowed us to explore the contributions of implicit and explicit knowledge to implicit learning in both non-social and social contexts.We aimed to reveal the mechanisms underlying compensatory processing in implicit learning among individuals with high autistic traits.In Study 3,we introduced feedback during the testing phase of both social and non-social implicit learning tasks.This study aimed to investigate the potential role of feedback in implicit learning among individuals with high autistic traits.These three studies collectively contribute to a comprehensive understanding of compensatory processing in implicit learning among individuals with high autistic traits,shedding light on the underlying mechanisms and the impact of feedback in this context.The research findings are as follows:(1)Individuals with both high and low levels of autistic traits demonstrated the ability to acquire implicit knowledge in both social and non-social implicit learning tasks.However,under the condition of rule exploration,individuals with high autistic traits exhibited significantly better learning performance compared to those with low autistic traits.This phenomenon suggests the presence of compensatory processing,indicating that the instructional cues provided during rule exploration align more effectively with the characteristics of implicit learning in individuals with high autistic traits.Furthermore,this compensatory processing was found to be associated with abnormal activation in brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex and the fusiform gyrus.(2)In the realms of non-social and social implicit learning,there exist certain differences in the mechanisms underlying compensatory processing between individuals with high and low levels of autistic traits.Specifically,in non-social implicit learning,individuals with high autistic traits predominantly rely on explicit knowledge as the primary source for knowledge extraction.However,when faced with more complex social implicit learning tasks,individuals with low autistic traits have both implicit and explicit knowledge simultaneously influencing the knowledge extraction process.Although there were no significant intergroup differences in the LPC component associated with explicit knowledge between individuals with high and low autistic traits,the separation of behavioral performance and awareness may suggest that the level of autistic traits is an important variable affecting compensatory processing to some extent.(3)By creating a process analogous to hypothesis testing,feedback was shown to alter the knowledge representation in high autistic trait individuals during implicit learning to some extent.This effectively enhanced the performance of high autistic trait individuals in non-social implicit learning when utilizing a memory-based approach.The aforementioned research results indicate that high autistic trait individuals do indeed exhibit compensatory processing in implicit learning.This compensatory processing spans the entire process of knowledge representation and extraction in implicit learning.Additionally,feedback can improve their performance in implicit learning to some extent,offering valuable insights for future clinical interventions.