Behavioral Regulation and Risk Taking in High-Functioning Autism

Background: Response to emotion plays an essential role in decision making. In general, previous research has shown that although individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) have difficulty with many cognitive tasks, they do respond to the manipulation of emotional influences on cognitive tasks in similar ways to comparison groups. In typical development, styles of behavioral regulation of emotion have been shown to be related to sensitivity to risk and reward in laboratory settings. We wondered how the behavioral regulation of emotion in ASC influences decision making.
Objectives: Based on the small existing literature, we hypothesized that although ASC individuals may not perform as optimally as typical comparison groups on a risk-based decision making task, the relative relationships between behavioral regulation and response to risk and punishment would be intact in ASC. That is, cognitive factors (including generally slower reaction time and longer time to process or integrate all of the available information) would lead to impaired performance overall, but that correlations between risk-taking and behavioral inhibition and activation would be similar to the comparison group.
Methods: 50 adolescents and adults (25 ASC and 25 matched comparison) completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a computer-based task that requires the participant to “blow up” virtual balloons as large as possible (in order to gain points) without popping them.  Participants also completed the appropriate (child or adult) version of the BIS/BAS questionnaire regarding behavioral regulation style; parents of adolescents completed the parent version.  Galvanic skin response (GSR) and heart rate (HR) data were collected simultaneously during the BART task via disposable electrodes on the fingers, wrist, and ankle.
Results: Both the ASC and comparison groups demonstrated substantial within-group individual differences regarding the value (relatively high, low, or medium) of their early responses. Both groups showed significant learning during the BART task as evidenced by a move from more extreme early responses towards successful, mid-range responses for the duration of the task.  The ASC group took slightly longer to achieve this point: the median response was achieved between the 13th and 14th (of 30) trial, about 2 trials longer than the comparison group.  Both groups demonstrated significant correlations between total earnings for the task and both the Behavioral Activation System-Drive Scale (positive correlation) and the Behavioral Inhibition Scale (negative correlation); these correlations were especially strong (>.55) for earnings during the early (first 10 trials) portion of the task.  The BAS-Reward scale was significantly, positively correlated with the GSR difference score for rewarded versus punished trials, reflecting a relationship between risk-taking on the BART task and the behavioral measure; this correlation was not significant for the ASC group.
Conclusions: There does appear to be a significant relationship in ASC between style of behavioral regulation of emotion, and performance on a risk-based experimental task. However, this may be moderated by different physiological mechanisms.  There is a bright future for research regarding emotional and cognitive endophenotypes of ASC using a combination of survey, experimental and physiological techniques.