Jaswal & Akhtar (J&A) argue that neither research nor the self-report of people with the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) indicate that affected people are disinterested in other people or social interaction. However, autism is a very complex part of human nature. Universal hypotheses like the “socially uninterested” stereotype of autism so prominent in the 1980s have given way to information on the heterogeneity of ASD, research from quantitative self-report measures, the evolution of diagnostic models of ASD, and the more precise application of social motivation hypotheses in ASD research.

Heterogeneity of expression and individual differences in the development of people with ASD are now well recognized (Georgiades et al. Reference Georgiades, Szatmari and Boyle2013; Happé et al. Reference Happé, Ronald and Plomin2006; Lombardo et al. Reference Lombardo, Lai, Auyeung, Holt, Allison, Smith, Chakrabarti, Ruigrok, Suckling, Bullmore, Ecker, Craig, Murphy, Happé and Baron-Cohen2016). With this awareness has come the view that universal descriptive statements about what autistic people do and do not do or prefer are rarely accurate (Happé et al. Reference Happé, Ronald and Plomin2006). Accordingly, people with ASD are likely to display individual differences and different patterns of social motivation across development (Burnette et al. Reference Burnette, Henderson, Inge, Zahka, Schwartz and Mundy2011). Indeed, based on the observations of Wing and Gould (Reference Wing and Gould1979) “children with ASD may exhibit significant individual differences in social motivation. Some individuals with ASD display social inhibition, withdrawal or aloof behavior, yet others exhibit active but odd social engagement that may be associated with positive social motivation, and that the latter may be associated with lower social symptom intensity in children with ASD” (Kim et al. Reference Kim, Rosenthal, Gwaltney, Jarrold, Hatt, McIntyre, Swain, Solomon and Mundy2015, p. 3892). Research consistent with this possibility indicates that people with ASD display differences in temperament associated with both approach and avoidance motivation (e.g., Burnette et al. Reference Burnette, Henderson, Inge, Zahka, Schwartz and Mundy2011; Schwartz et al. Reference Schwartz, Henderson, Inge, Zahka, Coman, Kojkowski, Hileman and Mundy2009).

These individual differences are also observed in quantitative self-reported ASD data on social anhedonia or the report of reduced pleasure derived from social interactions (Brown et al. Reference Brown, Silvia, Myin-Germeys and Kwapil2007). Typical males generally report less pleasure from social interactions than do females (Dodell-Feder & Germine Reference Dodell-Feder and Germine2018), and males with ASD have reported less pleasure and more neutral responses to social experiences than other people (Chevallier et al. Reference Chevallier, Kohls, Troiani, Brodkin and Schultz2012a). However, a closer look at the data of Chevallier et al. (Reference Chevallier, Kohls, Troiani, Brodkin and Schultz2012a) indicates the presence of significant individual differences; many of the ASD participants reported levels of social pleasure comparable to controls, but a substantial portion also reported the experience of social anhedonia.

In a related study, Novacek et al. (Reference Novacek, Gooding and Pflum2016) assessed 250 individuals with the autism spectrum quotient (Baron-Cohen et al. Reference Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin and Clubley2001) and the Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale (ACIPS, Gooding & Pflum Reference Gooding and Pflum2014). The ACIPS provided a self-reports of differences in pleasure experienced in interpersonal and social interactions. The results indicated a moderately strong association between higher frequencies of reports of autism-related behaviors and lower reports of the anticipation of pleasure in social interactions on the ACIPS (r = −.59, p < .001), even after controlling for variance on a measure of general anhedonia was considered (beta = −.42, p < .001).

Self-report on measures of social anxiety is also informative. As many as 50% of samples of adolescents and adults with ASD report clinical levels of social anxiety associated with aversion to social situations (Spain et al. Reference Spain, Sin, Linder, McMahon and Happé2018). Of course, these prevalence estimates also indicate that as many as 50% of people with ASD do not report social anxiety. Development may affect symptoms of social anxiety, such as fear of the negative evaluation by others, as this symptom is more apparent for adolescents than younger children with ASD (Kuusikko et al. Reference Kuusikko, Pollock-Wurman, Jussila, Carter, Mattila, Ebeling, Pauls and Moilanen2008). Social anxiety may also be related to decreased social motivation in some people with ASD (Corbett et al. Reference Corbett, Swain, Newsom, Wang, Song and Edgerton2014; Swain et al. Reference Swain, Scarpa, White and Laugeson2015) and may be related to faster disengagement from eyes in people with ASD (Kleberg et al. Reference Kleberg, Högström, Nord, Bölte, Serlachius and Falck-Ytter2017).

The stereotype of people with ASD as not interested in social interactions was reified by an old diagnostic description that suggested that all people with ASD display a pervasive lack of responsiveness to others (Mundy & Sigman Reference Mundy, Sigman and Dawson1989). This was the first and only descriptor of the social behavior of ASD in the 1980 version of the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III, American Psychiatric Association 1980). This description was removed from the nosology by 1986, and its expiration was hastened by the observation that young children with ASD displayed levels of attachment behaviors to caregivers that were similar to those of children with other disabilities (Rutgers et al. Reference Rutgers, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn and Van Berckelaer-Onnes2004; Sigman & Mundy Reference Sigman and Mundy1989; Sigman & Ungerer Reference Sigman and Ungerer1984). Subsequent research has indicated that some people with ASD have a desire for bonding and friendships with others (Bauminger et al. Reference Bauminger, Solomon and Rogers2010) and feel lonely when establishment of friendships is difficult (Locke et al. Reference Locke, Ishijima, Kasari and London2010). Thus, there has been an evidence-based movement away from the universal view of people with ASD as devoid of affiliative social motivation in the science of ASD for quite some time.

Finally, J&A offered hypotheses based on social motivation to explain observations of decreased social orienting, as well as social attention and information in preschool children with ASD (e.g., Chevallier et al. Reference Chevallier, Grèzes, Molesworth, Berthoz and Happé2012b; Mundy Reference Mundy1995; Reference Mundy2016; Rice et al. Reference Rice, Moriuchi, Jones and Klin2012; Stavropoulos & Carver Reference Stavropoulos and Carver2013). This is certainly the case for the social motivation hypothesis of joint attention in ASD, which figured prominently in their review. This hypothesis arose from the observations that initiating joint attention involved smiling or the conveyance of positive affect to other people less often in children with ASD than in other children (Gangi et al. Reference Gangi, Ibañez and Messinger2014; Kasari et al. Reference Kasari, Sigman, Mundy and Yirmiya1990; Mundy et al. Reference Mundy, Kasari and Sigman1992). It was also motivated by data indicating that preschool initiating joint attention predicts the development of childhood prosocial behaviors in children with ASD and typical development (Freeman et al. Reference Freeman, Gulsrud and Kasari2015; Parlade et al. Reference Parlade, Messinger, Delgado, Kaiser, Van Hecke and Mundy2009; Sheinkopf et al. Reference Sheinkopf, Mundy, Claussen and Willoughby2004; Sigman et al. Reference Sigman, Ruskin, Arbelle, Corona, Dissanayake, Espinosa, Kim, Lopez, Zierhut, Mervis and Robinson1999; Vaughan Van Hecke et al. Reference Vaughan Van Hecke, Mundy, Acra, Block, Delgado, Parlade, Meyer, Neal and Pomares2007).

Hence, the joint attention motivation hypothesis of initiating joint attention (IJA) in ASD was developed to address the role of positive affect and social motivation that arises in the first months of life (Mundy Reference Mundy1995). Because data indicated that IJA and attachment were not correlated in the development of children with or without ASD (Capps et al. Reference Capps, Sigman and Mundy1994; Claussen et al. Reference Claussen, Mundy, Mallik and Willoughby2002; Naber et al. Reference Naber, Swinkels, Buitelaar, Dietz, Van Daalen, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn and van Engeland2007), we hypothesized that IJA did not involve the social-bonding motivation associated with attachment. Instead, we argued that joint attention involved another, less well-recognized type of early social motivation specific to guiding (rewarding) the early prioritization of attending to and sharing experience with others (Mundy & Sigman Reference Mundy, Sigman, Cicchetti and Cohen2015). Most recently, our motivational model has focused on the development of arousal to eye contact in the first year of life (Senju & Johnson 2009) as a likely motivation factor in joint attention impairment in ASD (Mundy Reference Mundy2016). These elements of the literature on ASD, as well as those reviewed earlier, provide different perceptions of social motivation theory and research in ASD than were described by J&A.