Strategic decision making and prediction differences in autism

BACKGROUND: Several theories in autism posit that common aspects of the autism phenotype may be manifestations of an underlying differentiation in predictive abilities. The present study investigates this hypothesis in the context of strategic decision making in autistic participants compared to a control group. METHOD: Autistic individuals (43 adults, 35 male) and a comparison group (42 adults, 35 male) of age and gender matched individuals, played a modified version of the prisoner’s dilemma (PD) task where they were asked, if capable, to predict their opponents’ move. The predictive performance of the two groups was assessed. RESULTS: Overall, participants in the autism group had a significantly lower number of correct predictions. Moreover, autistic participants stated, significantly more frequently than the comparison group, that they were unable to make a prediction. When attempting a prediction however, the success ratio did not differ between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that there is a difference in prediction performance between the two groups. Although our task design does not allow us to identify whether this difference is due to difficulty to form a prediction or a reluctance in registering one, these findings could justify a role for prediction in strategic decision making during the PD task.