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Purpose: Predictive coding theories posit that autism is characterized by an over-adjustment to prediction errors, resulting in frequent updates of prior beliefs. Atypical weighting of prediction errors is generally considered to negatively impact the construction of stable models of the world, but may also yield beneficial effects. In a novel associative learning paradigm, we investigated whether unexpected events trigger faster learning updates in favour of subtle but fully predictive cues in autistic children compared to their non-autistic counterparts. We also explored the relationship between children’s language proficiency and their predictive performances.Anticipatory fixations and explicit predictions were recorded during three associative learning tasks with deterministic or probabilistic contingencies. One of the probabilistic tasks was designed so that a fully predictive but subtle cue was overshadowed by a less predictive salient one.Both autistic and non-autistic children based their learning on the salient cue, and, contrary to our predictions, showed no signs of updating in favour of the subtle cue. While both groups demonstrated associative learning, autistic children made less accurate explicit predictions than their non-autistic peers in all tasks. Explicit prediction performances were positively correlated with language proficiency in non-autistic children, but no such correlation was observed in autistic children.These results suggest no over-adjustment to prediction errors in autistic children and highlight the need to control for general performance in cue-outcome associative learning in predictive processing studies. Further research is needed to explore the nature of the relationship between predictive processing and language development in autism.Methods: Predictive coding theories posit that autism is characterized by an over-adjustment to prediction errors, resulting in frequent updates of prior beliefs. Atypical weighting of prediction errors is generally considered to negatively impact the construction of stable models of the world, but may also yield beneficial effects. In a novel associative learning paradigm, we investigated whether unexpected events trigger faster learning updates in favour of subtle but fully predictive cues in autistic children compared to their non-autistic counterparts. We also explored the relationship between children’s language proficiency and their predictive performances.Anticipatory fixations and explicit predictions were recorded during three associative learning tasks with deterministic or probabilistic contingencies. One of the probabilistic tasks was designed so that a fully predictive but subtle cue was overshadowed by a less predictive salient one.Both autistic and non-autistic children based their learning on the salient cue, and, contrary to our predictions, showed no signs of updating in favour of the subtle cue. While both groups demonstrated associative learning, autistic children made less accurate explicit predictions than their non-autistic peers in all tasks. Explicit prediction performances were positively correlated with language proficiency in non-autistic children, but no such correlation was observed in autistic children.These results suggest no over-adjustment to prediction errors in autistic children and highlight the need to control for general performance in cue-outcome associative learning in predictive processing studies. Further research is needed to explore the nature of the relationship between predictive processing and language development in autism.Results: Predictive coding theories posit that autism is characterized by an over-adjustment to prediction errors, resulting in frequent updates of prior beliefs. Atypical weighting of prediction errors is generally considered to negatively impact the construction of stable models of the world, but may also yield beneficial effects. In a novel associative learning paradigm, we investigated whether unexpected events trigger faster learning updates in favour of subtle but fully predictive cues in autistic children compared to their non-autistic counterparts. We also explored the relationship between children’s language proficiency and their predictive performances.Anticipatory fixations and explicit predictions were recorded during three associative learning tasks with deterministic or probabilistic contingencies. One of the probabilistic tasks was designed so that a fully predictive but subtle cue was overshadowed by a less predictive salient one.Both autistic and non-autistic children based their learning on the salient cue, and, contrary to our predictions, showed no signs of updating in favour of the subtle cue. While both groups demonstrated associative learning, autistic children made less accurate explicit predictions than their non-autistic peers in all tasks. Explicit prediction performances were positively correlated with language proficiency in non-autistic children, but no such correlation was observed in autistic children.These results suggest no over-adjustment to prediction errors in autistic children and highlight the need to control for general performance in cue-outcome associative learning in predictive processing studies. Further research is needed to explore the nature of the relationship between predictive processing and language development in autism.Conclusion: Predictive coding theories posit that autism is characterized by an over-adjustment to prediction errors, resulting in frequent updates of prior beliefs. Atypical weighting of prediction errors is generally considered to negatively impact the construction of stable models of the world, but may also yield beneficial effects. In a novel associative learning paradigm, we investigated whether unexpected events trigger faster learning updates in favour of subtle but fully predictive cues in autistic children compared to their non-autistic counterparts. We also explored the relationship between children’s language proficiency and their predictive performances.Anticipatory fixations and explicit predictions were recorded during three associative learning tasks with deterministic or probabilistic contingencies. One of the probabilistic tasks was designed so that a fully predictive but subtle cue was overshadowed by a less predictive salient one.Both autistic and non-autistic children based their learning on the salient cue, and, contrary to our predictions, showed no signs of updating in favour of the subtle cue. While both groups demonstrated associative learning, autistic children made less accurate explicit predictions than their non-autistic peers in all tasks. Explicit prediction performances were positively correlated with language proficiency in non-autistic children, but no such correlation was observed in autistic children.These results suggest no over-adjustment to prediction errors in autistic children and highlight the need to control for general performance in cue-outcome associative learning in predictive processing studies. Further research is needed to explore the nature of the relationship between predictive processing and language development in autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often described as being characterised by a uniform pragmatic impairment. However, recent evidence suggests that some areas of pragmatic functioning are preserved. This study seeks to determine to which extent context-based derivation of non-linguistically encoded meaning is functional in ASD. We compare the performance of 24 adults with ASD, and matched neuro-typical adults in two act-out pragmatic tasks. The first task examines generation of indirect request interpretations, and the second the comprehension of irony. Intact contextual comprehension of indirect requests contrasts with marked difficulties in understanding irony. These results suggest that preserved pragmatics in ASD is limited to egocentric processing of context, which does not rely on assumptions about the speaker’s mental states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]