Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can engage in highly focused repetitive tasks for hours. Alvares and colleagues wondered if this persistent behavioral focus might reflect a diminished degree of flexibility in goal directed behavior such that once an individual with ASD becomes engaged with a task, they may be unable to redirect their behavior toward a different goal. To find out, they compared the behavior of individuals with ASD that of individuals in two other groups: a group of individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), and a neurotypical control group. The participants were required to perform a high-value task up to the point where the value of the task diminished and the value of a different task increased.
The optimal response when relative task values change is to switch from the task with diminished value to the task that is now of highest value. But the researchers reported that both ASD and SAD participants persisted in the first task while only neurotypical individuals switched to the new high-value task. The authors suggest that ASD individuals may be unable to reorient their goal-directed behavior even though they know they should.
Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of heterogeneous neurodevelopmental conditions associated with persistent, stereotyped or repetitive actions, and patterns of interest that are maintained in spite of possible negative outcomes. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether impairments in the ability to execute flexible goal‐directed actions may be an underlying feature in ASD contributing to these symptoms. Young adults diagnosed with ASD were recruited along with controls and adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Participants were trained to make keyboard actions for food outcomes and then subsequently allowed to consume one outcome till satiety. As expected, this outcome devaluation procedure reduced subsequent responding for actions predicting the devalued outcome, while maintaining responding on the other still‐valued action, in controls. However, both ASD and SAD participants were unable to demonstrate flexible goal‐directed actions, and were insensitive to the change in outcome value on subsequent action control. This behavioral deficit was not due to impairments in appropriate contingency awareness, as all groups rated the devalued food outcome as less pleasant after devaluation. A lack of control over actions may underlie persistent and habitual actions in anxiety‐inducing contexts typical in both ASD and SAD, such as avoidance and safety behaviors. Using a translational behavioral paradigm, this study demonstrated that individuals with ASD are unable to use changes in the environment to flexibly update their behavior in the same context. This reduced behavioral control may underlie persistence of intrusive actions and restricted inflexible cognition, representing a specific area for targeted behavioral interventions.
Citation
Alvares, G. A., Balleine, B. W., Whittle, L., & Guastella, A. J. (2016). Reduced goal‐directed action control in autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 9(12), 1285–1293.
Dr Martin Fracker 