Effort Based Decision Making in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (2012)

Undergraduates: Joseph Aloi, Cara Damiano, Michael Treadway James W. Bodfish

Faculty Advisor: Gabriel Dichter
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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Introduction: Reward system functioning has been implicated in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (Dichter et al., 2010; Kohls et al., 2011). Because it has also been shown that functioning of the mesolimbic dopamine system (a crucial component of reward circuitry) influences effort based decision-making (Wardle et al., 2011), we investigated effort based decision-making in individuals with ASDs.

Methods: We used the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT) (Treadway et al., 2009) to measure effort based decision-making in ASDs. This task measures behavioral choices to obtain varying amounts of rewards by expending varying amounts of effort.

Results: Overall, the ASD group chose hard task options significantly more often than did the TD group t(56)=3.06, p=.003, and the proportion of hard task choices was correlated with measures of repetitive behavior symptoms across both groups.

Conclusions: These results suggest that individuals with ASD may be more willing to expend motoric effort to obtain a monetary reward regardless of the reward contingencies. More broadly, these results suggest that behavioral choices may be less influenced by information about reward contingencies in individuals with ASD. This atypical pattern of effort-based decision-making may be relevant for understanding the heightened reward motivation for circumscribed interests in ASD.