It is commonly assumed that autistic children are less motivated to engage with others and that they are happy to be left alone in their private world of interests and preoccupations. In fact, some researchers believe that a lack of social motivation is a key characteristic of autism (Chevallier et al., 2012b).

According to the social motivation theory, developed by Simon Baron-Cohen in the 1990s, autistic individuals differ in their motivation to engage in social interactions in comparison with non-autistic individuals.

Neuroimaging studies suggest that autistic individuals may have unique “reward processing of social stimuli” (Bottini, 2018), which means that the network of brain structures that detects relevant social stimuli, evaluates their reward value, and makes decisions, is functioning differently from that of neurotypical peers. The reward processing network is also referred to as the orbitofrontal-striatum-amygdala network (Chevallier et al., 2012). The function of this network is additionally mediated by numerous neurochemicals including dopamine and oxytocin (Chevallier et al., 2012).

Social motivation theory proposes that the abnormal reward processing of social stimuli affects autistic persons’ development of social cognition and is........

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