Oxytocin versus autism: A cure for altruism

The widespread message arising fromAndari et al. (in press) is that the hormone oxytocin "may be a powerful weapon in fighting autism" or words to that effect.The heart of this study is a computer game version of catch which appears to involve four human players. When a player is thrown the ball, he must then throw it to another player of his choice. Every time a player receives the ball, he receives a bit of money.In Andari et al. (in press), small groups of autistic and nonautistic adults ( " P " ) individually play this game with three strangers ( " A " " B " " C " ). Much is done to persuade the autistic and nonautistic participants that the strangers, who in fact are elaborately programmed, are actual, present, proximate (in adjacent booths), decision-making human beings.The three strangers start by equally distributing the ball to the other players. Then the elaborate program kicks in: A and C increasingly favour one player (P and B, respectively) while shunning the others. B ' s behaviour does not change.In a prototypical display of us-vs-them thinking, the nonautistic Ps responded by ganging up with A to reap the social and monetary gains of a close alliance founded on the exclusion of half the players.The autistic Ps in contrast displayed no such selfish and discriminatory behaviour. They continued to throw the ball to the other players in equal proportion, ignoring their self-interest in favour of keeping all players equally included.Further, subjective ratings of t...
Source: The Autism Crisis - Category: Child Development Source Type: blogs