Highly logical and non-emotional decisions in both risky and social contexts: understanding decision making in autism spectrum disorder through computational modeling

Cogn Process. 2024 Mar 25. doi: 10.1007/s10339-024-01182-4. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTIn risky contexts, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals exhibit more logical consistency and non-emotional decisions than do typical adults (TAs). This way of deciding could be also prevailing in social contexts, leading to maladaptive decisions. This evidence is scarce and inconsistent, and further research is needed. Recent developments in computational modeling allow analysis of decisional subcomponents that could provide valuable information to understand the decision-making and help address inconsistencies. Twenty-seven individuals with ASD and 25 TAs were submitted to a framing-task and the ultimatum game (UG). The Rescorla-Wagner computational model was used to analyze UG decisions. Results showed that in the UG, the ASD group exhibited a higher utilitarianism, characterized by lower aversion to unfairness and higher acceptance of offers. Moreover, this way of deciding was predicted by the higher economic rationality found in the framing task, where people with ASD did not manifest emotional biases such as framing effect. These results could suggest an atypical decision making, highly logical and non-emotional, as a robust feature of ASD.PMID:38526667 | DOI:10.1007/s10339-024-01182-4

Source: Cognitive Processing - March 25, 2024 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Francisco Molins Nour Ben-Hassen Jemni Dolores Garrote-Petisco Miguel Ángel Serrano Source Type: research