Modeling risk perception using independent and social learning: application to individuals with autism spectrum disorder

ABSTRACT

The current study mathematically models key factors influencing Risk Perception (RP) that involves knowledge inferred from present situations and social learning, past information and priming effect. It is a generalized perception-based model and in the present paper, it is applied to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The computational model has been simulated for numerous rounds in two phases to find a quantitative value of the model factors. In the first phase, the model reflected dependency of RP upon recent past events and priming, while second phase revealed that social learning modulates RP, even in ASD. This further proves that peer-interaction plays a crucial role in building perception. Thus, our work provides a mathematical framework to evaluate perception objectively in any situation, such as risky/danger-situations.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism spectrum disorder
• mathematical
• priming
• risk-perception
• social learning

Acknowledgments

We are very thankful to the participants and parents for their commitment to the study. We thank the local NGO’s (PRAYAAS, SPARSH, and SOCH) owners and supervisors for their whole time input while recruiting the children and during the data acquisition. We are highly grateful to Dr. Madhvi Oberoi (Medical officer, SPARSH, Jalandhar Cantonment Hospital) and Dr. Pallavi Khanna (Institution psychologists) for their throughout co-operation and immense help and Dr. Jagwinder Singh (Professor, NIT Jalandhar) for helping with statistical analysis of results. Also, the authors agree with the manuscript’s contents.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there is no conflict of interest.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

The present research did not receive grants from any of the funding agencies in public, commercial, or non-profit sectors.