Poster No:
728
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Isaac IP1, Hey Tou Chiu1, Savio Wong1
Institutions:
1The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
First Author:
Isaac IP
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, Hong Kong
Co-Author(s):
Hey Tou Chiu
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, Hong Kong
Savio Wong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, Hong Kong
Introduction:
Shame and guilt are self-conscious emotions (SCEs) that serve to motivate us to act in accordance with social norms and personal standards (Else-Quest et al., 2012). These SCEs promote the attainment of social goals and motivate behaviors that promote social acceptance (Tracy & Robins, 2004). Shame is generated by attributing a failure or transgression to the global self and is coupled with motivation tendency to avoid or withdraw. In contrast, guilt is behavior specific and is associated with motivation tendency to repair. While guilt after a transgression can help maintain social relationships, too much of shame or a lack of guilt could inhibit prosocial behaviors and formation of close social relationships (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). In this study, we examine the neural basis of individual differences in shame- and guilt-proneness and its relationship with autistic trait in neurotypical (NT) individuals using resting-state fMRI. Previous studies have showed that autism can be treated as a set of continuous traits that extend into the general population (Sucksmith et al., 2011). These include a set of subclinical behaviors and characteristic that are qualitatively similar to autism. Individuals with autism or high in autistic traits showed a different tendency to experience shame and guilt than NT individuals. Davidson et al. (2017) reported that those who scored higher in autism traits had higher shame-proneness but lower guilt-proneness than those who scored lower in autism traits.
Methods:
Forty-five participants (20 females, age: M = 22.0, SD = 3.88) completed a resting state fMRI scan as part of a larger study. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Autistic trait was assessed with the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ; Hurley et al., 2007) which measures personality and language characteristics, that are subclinical and qualitatively similar to the defining features of autism. Proneness to shame and guilt were measured by the Test of Self-Conscious Affect 3 (TOSCA-3; Tangney & Dearing, 2004). Scanning was performed using a Siemens Prisma 3T MR scanner. Five minutes of resting state BOLD function scans and a MPRAGE image were acquired for each participant. Preprocessing of the imaging data was performed using the CONN toolbox with the default preprocessing pipeline for volume-based analyses. To identify ROIs, Intrinsic Connectivity Contrast (ICC) maps were computed to assess hypothesis-free whole-brain connectivity for each voxel in the brain. The 1st-level analysis yields a map for each participant where a higher value represents the strength of connectivity of that voxel with the rest of the brain and thus a network measure of node centrality. Two separate 2nd-level GLM that includes proneness to shame and guilt, with BAPQ as a covariate were used to delineate ROIs where their node centrality would be associated with individual differences in autistic traits and proneness to shame and guilt. The obtained ROIs were used for follow-up seed-based connectivity (SBC) analyses to probe further into their functional connectivity (FC) with specific brain regions.
Results:
The correlation analysis showed that higher scores in BAPQ were associated with higher levels of shame-proneness, r = .47, p < .001 but lower levels of guilt-proneness, r = -.34, p = .013. The right frontal pole (rFP) is identified in the ICC analysis as the seed of the following SBC analysis in which BAPQ scores were found to associate with the FC at ACC, PCC, right superior frontal gyrus (rSFG), and left posterior mid temporal gyrus. Mediation analyses showed that the positive association between autistic traits and shame-proneness is mediated by the FC between rFP and ACC, PCC, and rSFG while the negative association with guilt-proneness is mediated by the FC between rFP and rSFG.
Conclusions:
Our results show that autistic traits had indirect effects on shame- and guilt-proneness through the FC between rFP and midline cortical structures (ACC and PCC).
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotion and Motivation Other 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural)
Task-Independent and Resting-State Analysis 2
Keywords:
Autism
Emotions
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Davidson, D. (2017), Proneness to Self-Conscious Emotions in Adults With and Without Autism Traits. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47(11), 3392–3404.
Else-Quest, N. (2012), Gender Differences in Self-Conscious Emotional Experience: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 138, 947–981.
Hurley, R. S. (2007). The broad autism phenotype questionnaire. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 37, 1679-1690.
Sucksmith, E. (2011). Autistic traits below the clinical threshold: re-examining the broader autism phenotype in the 21st century. Neuropsychology review, 21, 360-389.
Tangney, J. P., & Dearing, R. L. (2004). Shame and guilt (Paperback ed. 2004). Guilford Press.
Tracy, J. L., (2004) “Putting the Self Into Self-Conscious Emotions: A Theoretical Model.” Psychological Inquiry, 15(2), 103–125.