Understanding the Association Between Negative Symptoms and Performance on Effort-Based Decision-Making Tasks: The Importance of Defeatist Performance Beliefs.
L Felice Reddy, William P Horan, Deanna M Barch, Robert W Buchanan, James M Gold, Stephen R Marder, Jonathan K Wynn, Jared Young, Michael F Green
Author Information
L Felice Reddy: Department of Veterans Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles, CA.
William P Horan: Department of Veterans Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles, CA.
Deanna M Barch: Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Radiology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO.
Robert W Buchanan: Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.
James M Gold: Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.
Stephen R Marder: Department of Veterans Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles, CA.
Jonathan K Wynn: Department of Veterans Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles, CA.
Jared Young: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego.
Michael F Green: Department of Veterans Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles, CA.
Effort-based decision-making paradigms are increasingly utilized to gain insight into the nature of motivation deficits. Research has shown associations between effort-based decision making and experiential negative symptoms; however, the associations are not consistent. The current study had two primary goals. First, we aimed to replicate previous findings of a deficit in effort-based decision making among individuals with schizophrenia on a test of cognitive effort. Second, in a large sample combined from the current and a previous study, we sought to examine the association between negative symptoms and effort by including the related construct of defeatist beliefs. The results replicated previous findings of impaired cognitive effort-based decision making in schizophrenia. Defeatist beliefs significantly moderated the association between negative symptoms and effort-based decision making such that there was a strong association between high negative symptoms and deficits in effort-based decision making, but only among participants with high levels of defeatist beliefs. Thus, our findings suggest the relationship between negative symptoms and effort performance may be understood by taking into account the role of defeatist beliefs, and finding that might explain discrepancies in previous studies.
References
World Psychiatry. 2017 Feb;16(1):14-24
[PMID: 28127915]
