Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Brain Cogn. 2010 Mar;72(2):317-24. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2009.10.005. Epub 2009 Nov 12.
Recent studies have recorded a tendency of individuals with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) to continually change their choices in repeated choice tasks. In the current study we examine if this finding implies that ASC individuals have a cognitive style that facilitates exploration and discovery. Six decision tasks were administered to adolescents with ASC and matched controls. Significant differences in shifting between choice options appeared in the Iowa Gambling task (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994). A formal cognitive modeling analysis demonstrated that for about half of the ASC participants the adaptation process did not conform to the standard reinforcement learning model. These individuals were only coarsely affected by choice-outcomes, and were more influenced by the exploratory value of choices, being attracted to previously un-explored alternatives. An examination of the five simpler decision tasks where the advantageous option was easier to determine showed no evidence of this pattern, suggesting that the shifting choice pattern is not an uncontrollable tendency independent of task outcomes. These findings suggest that ASC individuals have a unique adaptive learning style, which may be beneficial is some learning environment but maladaptive in others, particularly in social contexts.
最近的研究记录了自闭症谱系障碍（ASC）个体在重复选择任务中不断改变选择的倾向。在目前的研究中，我们研究了这一发现是否意味着 ASC 个体具有促进探索和发现的认知风格。对患有 ASC 的青少年和匹配的对照组进行了六项决策任务。在爱荷华赌博任务（Bechara、Damasio、Damasio 和 Anderson，1994）中出现了选择选项之间显著的转换差异。正式的认知建模分析表明，对于大约一半的 ASC 参与者来说，适应过程不符合标准的强化学习模型。这些个体仅受到选择结果的粗略影响，并且受到选择的探索价值的影响更大，被以前未探索过的替代方案所吸引。对五个更简单的决策任务的检查显示，其中有利选项更容易确定，没有证据表明存在这种模式，这表明选择模式的转变不是一种独立于任务结果的不可控趋势。这些发现表明，ASC 个体具有独特的适应性学习风格，这种风格在某些学习环境中可能是有益的，但在其他环境中，特别是在社会环境中，可能是适应不良的。
