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Pupillary responses to a cognitive effort task in schizophrenia
L Felice Reddy1, Eric A Reavis1, Jonathan K Wynn1
1Department of Veterans Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States; UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior, David Geffen School of Medicine, United States.
Schizophrenia Research
|March 13, 2018
Summary
This study validates cognitive effort manipulation in decision-making tasks for schizophrenia research using pupillometry. Findings confirm physiological effort changes and link them to cognitive ability and negative symptoms.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Psychophysiology
- Clinical psychology
Background:
- Effort-based decision-making tasks are crucial for understanding motivation deficits.
- Current tasks assessing effort in schizophrenia lack psychophysiological validation.
- Cognitive effort manipulation needs empirical confirmation in these paradigms.
Purpose of the Study:
- To psychophysiologically validate the effort manipulation in a cognitive effort-based decision-making task.
- To assess pupillary responses as a measure of cognitive effort.
- To explore correlations between physiological effort indicators, cognition, and negative symptoms in schizophrenia.
Main Methods:
- Adapted the Deck Choice Effort Task for pupillometric assessment.
- Measured pupillary responses during easy and difficult cognitive effort conditions.
- Correlated pupillary data with cognitive assessments and negative symptom ratings.
Main Results:
- Pupillary responses significantly differed between easy and difficult effort conditions, confirming effort manipulation.
- Pupillary responses correlated with cognitive ability.
- Physiological indicators of effort were linked to negative symptoms when controlling for cognition.
Conclusions:
- Pupillometry provides physiological validation for cognitive effort manipulation in decision-making tasks.
- This validated task can reliably assess effort and motivation in schizophrenia.
- Findings support the use of psychophysiological measures in understanding schizophrenia.
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