Affective forecasting (AF) refers to an individual's expectations of the emotions they will experience in the future. AF plays a crucial role in daily lives and is important for mental health. However, there is a paucity of empirical studies comparing the shared and distinct AF performance across subclinical samples, and hence, the underlying neural mechanisms of AF in these subclinical samples remain unclear.
To address these gaps, Dr. Raymond Chan and Dr. YANG Tianxiao from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, compared the shared and distinct characteristics of AF in participants with high levels of autistic traits (AT), social anhedonia (SA), subthreshold depression (SD), and controls (CT). Participants completed the laboratory-based and real-life AF tasks, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans.
The researchers recruited 384 participants to complete the laboratory-based task (107 SA, 102 SD, 76 AT, and 99 controls). Among these participants, 267 participants continued to complete the experience sampling task (66 SA, 71 SD, 55 AT, and 75 CT, totaling 9715 events). Subsequently, 120 participants completed the resting-state fMRI scans (32 SA, 33 SD, 21 AT, and 34 controls).
Results showed that, compared with controls, the SA group exhibited widespread deficits in AF in both laboratory and real-life settings, including lower anticipated pleasure, fewer mental simulation details, as well as reduced anticipated motivation levels for the laboratory-based events. In contrast, the SD and AT groups exhibited relatively intact AF performance but also showed abnormalities in specific aspects. The SD group anticipated lower motivation levels in the laboratory-based task, while the AT group reported fewer mental simulation details. In the real-life AF task, all the three subclinical groups exhibited larger AF valence bias compared with controls, suggesting that valence bias may serve as transdiagnostic target for early prevention. Compared with controls, the SA and AT groups exhibited hypo-connectivity between Default Mode Network seeds and a broad region of brain, while the SD group exhibited hyper-connectivity between the lateral temporal cortex and the supramarginal gyrus; and some of the altered functional connectivity were associated with laboratory-based and real-life AF performance, revealing potential neural correlates.
Taken together, the present study identified the shared and unique characteristics of AF performance in people with high levels of SA, SD, and AT at both behavioral and functional imaging levels. These important empirical findings contribute to the early identification and prevention of high-risk psychiatric populations.
This study was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China, the Scientific Foundation of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the STI2030-Major Projects, and the Philip K. H. Wong Foundation.
This study entitled "Affective forecasting in people with autistic traits, social anhedonia, and subthreshold depression: a multi-method study" has been published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience. GAO Yan, a master's student at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is the first author. Dr. YANG Tianxiao and Dr. Raymond Chan are the co-corresponding authors.
