Comparison of choose-a-movie and approach-avoidance paradigms used to measure social motivation

Dubey, I., Ropar, D. and Hamilton, A. (2018) Comparison of choose-a-movie and approach-avoidance paradigms used to measure social motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 42 (2). pp. 190-199. ISSN 1573-6644 doi: 10.1007/s11031-017-9647-1

Abstract/Summary

Social motivation is a subjective state which is rather difficult to quantify. It has sometimes been conceptualised as “behavioural effort” to seek social contact. Two paradigms: approach–avoidance (AA) and choose a movie (CAM), based on the same conceptualisation, have been used to measure social motivation in people with and without autism. However, in absence of a direct comparison, it is hard to know which of these paradigms has higher sensitivity in estimating preference for social over non-social stimuli. Here we compare these two tasks for their utility in (1) evaluating social seeking in typical people and (2) identifying the influence of autistic traits on social motivation. Our results suggest that CAM reveals a clear preference for social stimuli over non-social in typical adults but AA fails to do so. Also, social seeking measured with CAM but not AA has a negative relationship between autistic traits.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/75148
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s11031-017-9647-1
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology
Publisher	Springer
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item