1st Department of Psychiatry, Aiginiteion Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Attica, Greece.
Laskaridis Foudation, Athens, Attica, Greece.
PeerJ. 2023 Jul 28;11:e15751. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15751. eCollection 2023.
The fast, intuitive and autonomous system 1 along with the slow, analytical and more logical system 2 constitute the dual system processing model of decision making. Whether acting independently or influencing each other both systems would, to an extent, rely on randomness in order to reach a decision. The role of randomness, however, would be more pronounced when arbitrary choices need to be made, typically engaging system 1. The present exploratory study aims to capture the expression of a possible innate randomness mechanism, as proposed by the authors, by trying to isolate system 1 and examine arbitrary decision making in autistic participants with high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).
Autistic participants withhigh functioning ASD and an age and gender matched comparison group performed the random number generation task. The task was modified to limit the contribution of working memory and allow any innate randomness mechanisms expressed through system 1, to emerge.
Utilizing a standard analyses approach, the random number sequences produced by autistic individuals and the comparison group did not differ in their randomness characteristics. No significant differences were identified when the sequences were examined using a moving window approach. When machine learning was used, random sequences' features could discriminate the groups with relatively high accuracy.
Our findings indicate the possibility that individual patterns during random sequence production could be consistent enough between groups to allow for an accurate discrimination between the autistic and the comparison group. In order to draw firm conclusions around innate randomness and further validate our experiment, our findings need to be replicated in a bigger sample.
快速、直观和自主的系统 1 以及缓慢、分析和更具逻辑性的系统 2 构成了决策的双重系统处理模型。无论是独立作用还是相互影响，两个系统都将在一定程度上依赖于随机性来做出决策。然而，当需要做出任意选择时，随机性的作用会更加明显，通常会涉及系统 1。本探索性研究旨在通过尝试隔离系统 1 并检查高功能自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者的任意决策，来捕捉作者提出的一种可能的先天随机性机制的表达。
高功能 ASD 自闭症患者和年龄、性别匹配的对照组进行随机数生成任务。该任务经过修改，以限制工作记忆的贡献，并允许通过系统 1 表达任何先天的随机性机制。
利用标准分析方法，自闭症患者和对照组产生的随机数序列在随机性特征上没有差异。当使用移动窗口方法检查序列时，没有发现显著差异。当使用机器学习时，随机序列的特征可以以相对较高的准确性来区分组。
我们的发现表明，在随机序列产生过程中，个体模式在组间可能足够一致，从而可以在自闭症患者和对照组之间进行准确的区分。为了围绕先天随机性得出更确定的结论，并进一步验证我们的实验，我们的发现需要在更大的样本中进行复制。
