Vicarious Effort-Based Decision-Making in Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Maya G Mosner, Jessica L Kinard, Sean McWeeny and 8 others
PMID 28699053WHAT IT FOUND
Adolescents with autism made more effort choices for others than controls, but ignored reward size.
They did not differ from controls when working for themselves. This suggests a specific issue with valuing rewards for other people.
Key findings
01Adolescents with ASD made significantly more hard task choices relative to the TDC group when earning rewards for others.
02The ASD group was less influenced by increasing reward magnitudes when earning rewards for others.
03In the standard reward condition for self, adolescents with ASD did not differ in their willingness to expend effort compared to TDC adolescents.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study only included high-functioning adolescents with nonverbal IQ > 70, so results may not generalize to those with greater intellectual disability. 68% of the ASD group had at least one comorbid disorder and 62% were on medication, which may have influenced motivation and reward processing. Groups differed in Verbal IQ, Full Scale IQ, and gender, and these factors altered findings when included as covariates. The task did not screen for subtle motor impairments, which could have affected the button-press performance and response times. Alternative statistical analyses (GEE) did not replicate the group findings observed with ANOVA, indicating the need for replication.
Declared interests
The study was approved by the UNC-Chapel Hill biomedical institutional review board. No specific funding sources or author conflicts of interest were declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the finding that adolescents with ASD made more hard choices for others as evidence of greater prosocial motivation. The paper states this reflects a decreased sensitivity to reward magnitude, meaning they did not adjust their effort based on how valuable the reward was for the other person.