WHEN attempting to make a rational choice, people with high-functioning autism may be less swayed by emotion than most.
Two years ago a team led by Benedetto De Martino, now at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, showed that most people considering a set of options are heavily influenced by how the options are put to them, irrespective of which option is more likely to benefit them.
Subjects played a game in which they had a choice of earning 拢20 out of a possible 拢50, or gambling for the whole amount and risk getting nothing. People were more likely to gamble when the first option was presented as a 拢30 loss rather than a 拢20 gain, even though there was no difference in the odds (Science, vol 313, p 660).
Advertisement
De Martino鈥檚 team also asked 15 people with autism to play the game. They found that in people with autism the effect of changing the way the game was described was only half as powerful as with a control group (Journal of Neuroscience, vol 28, p 10746).
鈥淯nderstanding how individuals with autism make decisions will help us tease apart how this contributes to the difficulties they experience,鈥� says co-author Neil Harrison of University College London.
Mental Health 鈥� Discover the latest research in our continuously updated special report.
