The association between punishment and cooperation in children with high-functioning autism.

This study examined judgment about punishment and whether punishment promoted cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game (PDG) in children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and typically developing (TD) children. In total, 66 6- to 12-year-olds participated in this study. Children were first asked about judgments regarding rewards and punishment in stories, and then they were asked to play the PDG with a partner in conditions with and without punishment. Results showed that children with HFA believed that hitting others should deserve punishment to a greater extent than TD children did. It indicated that children with HFA understood that bad acts should be punished, suggesting that these children have already acquired the general concept of "punishment." Children displayed higher levels of cooperation in the condition with punishment than in the condition without punishment in the PDG, suggesting that punishment promoted cooperation in the PDG in both children with HFA and TD children.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

• Publication date

  2018-07-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.01.015PMID 29494824
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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