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- Title
Dampened motivation in schizophrenia: evidence from a novel effort-based decision-making task in social scenarios.
- Authors
Shao, Yu-Xin; Wang, Ling-Ling; Zhou, Han-Yu; Yi, Zheng-Hui; Liu, Shuai; Yan, Chao
- Abstract
Apathy represents a significant manifestation of negative symptoms within individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia (SCZ) and exerts a profound impact on their social relationships. However, the specific implications of this motivational deficit in social scenarios have yet to be fully elucidated. The present study aimed to examine effort-based decision-making in social scenarios and its relation to apathy symptoms in SCZ patients. We initially recruited a group of 50 healthy participants (16 males) to assess the validity of the paradigm. Subsequently, we recruited 45 individuals diagnosed with SCZ (24 males) and 49 demographically-matched healthy controls (HC, 25 males) for the main study. The Mock Job Interview Task was developed to measure effort-based decision-making in social scenarios. The proportion of hard-task choice and a range of subjective ratings were obtained to examine potential between-group differences. SCZ patients were less likely than HC to choose the hard task with strict interviewers, and this group difference was significant when the hard-task reward value was medium and high. More severe apathy symptoms were significantly correlated with an overall reduced likelihood of making a hard-task choice. When dividing the jobs into two categories based on the levels of social engagement needed, SCZ patients were less willing to expend effort to pursue a potential offer for jobs requiring higher social engagement. Our findings indicated impaired effort-based decision-making in SCZ can be generalized from the monetary/nonsocial to a more ecologically social dimension. Our findings affirm the critical role of aberrant effort allocation on negative symptoms, and may facilitate the development of targeted clinical interventions.
- Subjects
REWARD (Psychology); EMPLOYMENT interviewing; PEOPLE with schizophrenia; SOCIAL skills; JOB offers
- Publication
European Archives of Psychiatry & Clinical Neuroscience, 2024, Vol 274, Issue 6, p1447
- ISSN
0940-1334
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s00406-024-01761-8