Using Economic Games to Assess Social Orienting and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Researchers used simple economic games to compare social decision-making between adolescents with ASD and neurotypical controls, finding reduced social orienting in ASD participants but unexpectedly higher prosocial behavior in certain conditions. The study demonstrates that behavioral economics experiments can effectively quantify autism-related social differences beyond traditional observation-based assessments.