Abstract
BackgroundEfficient effort expenditure to obtain rewards is critical for optimal goal-directed behavior and learning. Clinical observation suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may show dysregulated reward-based effort expenditure, but no behavioral study to date has assessed effort-based decision-making in ASD.MethodsThe current study compared a group of adults with ASD to a group of typically developing adults on the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT), a behavioral measure of effort-based decision-making. In this task, participants were provided with the probability of receiving a monetary reward on a particular trial and asked to choose between either an “easy task” (less motoric effort) for a small, stable reward or a “hard task” (greater motoric effort) for a variable but consistently larger reward.ResultsParticipants with ASD chose the hard task more frequently than did the control group, yet were less influenced by differences in reward value and probability than the control group. Additionally, effort-based decision-making was related to repetitive behavior symptoms across both groups.ConclusionsThese results suggest that individuals with ASD may be more willing to expend effort to obtain a monetary reward regardless of the reward contingencies. More broadly, 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.
Highlights
Efficient effort expenditure to obtain rewards is critical for optimal goal-directed behavior and learning
Several different approaches have been used to measure the functional output of reward processing systems in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), reward-based choices in the context of effort expenditure have yet to be examined in this population
Percentage of hard task choices The omnibus 3 (Reward Magnitude: small, medium, large) × 3 (Probability: 12%, 50%, 88%) x 2 (Group: ASD, control) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) performed on the percentage of hard task choices revealed a significant three-way interaction, F(4, 53) = 4.12, p = 0.006, and a significant Probability x Group interaction, F(2, 55) = 44.81, p = 0.003
Summary
Efficient effort expenditure to obtain rewards is critical for optimal goal-directed behavior and learning. Clinical observations suggest that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) may have reduced motivation to seek social interaction, yet heightened motivation to expend effort in the pursuit of certain non-social stimuli (that is, circumscribed interests) Consistent with these observations, some theoretical and clinical conceptualizations of ASD highlight a failure to assign reward value to social interactions originating in infancy (example, [1,2,3]). Effort-based decision-making indexes the behavioral motivation to obtain rewards relative to effort expenditure and missed opportunities for competing rewards (that is, reward-based cost-benefit decisions) This process is critically important for choosing among biologically relevant goal-directed behaviors, such as feeding, learning, and social interactions [17,18,19]. Alterations in reward processing within ventral striatal regions have been reported in ASD [9,10,16]
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