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People With Autism Spectrum Conditions Make More Consistent Decisions.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Farmer, George D 
Skylark, William J 

Abstract

People with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) show reduced sensitivity to contextual stimuli in many perceptual and cognitive tasks. We investigated whether this also applies to decision making by examining adult participants' choices between pairs of consumer products that were presented with a third, less desirable "decoy" option. Participants' preferences between the items in a given pair frequently switched when the third item in the set was changed, but this tendency was reduced among individuals with ASC, which indicated that their choices were more consistent and conventionally rational than those of control participants. A comparison of people who were drawn from the general population and who varied in their levels of autistic traits revealed a weaker version of the same effect. The reduced context sensitivity was not due to differences in noisy responding, and although the ASC group took longer to make their decisions, this did not account for the enhanced consistency of their choices. The results extend the characterization of autistic cognition as relatively context insensitive to a new domain, and have practical implications for socioeconomic behavior.

Description

Keywords

attraction effect, autism, decision making, open data, open materials, preregistered, rational choice, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Young Adult

Journal Title

Psychol Sci

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0956-7976
1467-9280

Volume Title

28

Publisher

SAGE Publications
Sponsorship
This research was funded by the Wellcome Trust research grant number RG76641 and Isaac Newton Trust research grant number RG70368.