Investigating the Effects of Emotional Awareness and Autistic Traits on Risky Decision-Making and Regret Responsiveness.

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

In a computerised task (adapted from Brassen et al., 2012 by Feeney et al., 2017) eight boxes were presented in a row. Seven boxes contained a gold coin but one contained the pirate, who stole all coins collected on that trial. Participants opened boxes from left to right. They could stop and bank the coins collected so far; this revealed the location of the pirate, illustrating the size of the missed opportunity. The larger the missed opportunity, the greater the potential to experience regret, which should result in less risk taking in the next trial. This adaptive behaviour is referred to as regret responsiveness which can impact decision-making, as it encourages individuals to become less risk-taking, to avoid experiencing regret. Feeney et al. (2017) found 8-year-olds were more likely to show regret responsiveness than 6-year-olds. Feeney et al. poses that such developmental changes in decision-making may be explained by broader emotional regulation. Emotional awareness is an integral component of emotional regulation (Boden & Thompson, 2015). We explored if this age difference in regret responsivity is due to increased emotional awareness. We predicted that with age, children will be more emotionally aware and demonstrate more regret responsiveness. Also, we explored if autistic traits are related to children’s decision-making. Previous research with adults has found that individuals from the general population with high autistic traits make more consistent decision and are less likely to be influenced by contextual stimuli (Farmer, Baron-Cohen & Skylark, 2017). We predicted that children with higher autistic traits will demonstrate less regret responsivity.
The ‘pirate task’ measured regret responsiveness and risk-taking. To measure emotional awareness, children completed the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale for Children (LEAS-C) that assesses explicit emotional awareness of emotions (anger, fear, sadness and happiness) and parents completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) to measure emotional awareness and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) to measure autistic traits.
No statistically significant relationships were found between the four measures (basic risk-taking, regret responsiveness, emotional awareness, and autistic traits) (all p-values >0.05). Age was not related to the different measures (all p-values >0.05).
Emotional awareness and autistic traits are not related to risk-taking or regret responsiveness. The findings suggest emotional awareness is not implicated in the regret responsiveness difference between 6- and 8-year olds found by Feeney et al. Whilst we did not replicate Feeney et al.’s finding that children’s regret responsiveness increases with age, we only conducted a basic correlational analysis, which may explain the difference in our findings. To better explore regret responsiveness, we will conduct an exploratory multi-level linear regression model to predict risk on trial t. To quantify the impact of age on regret responsiveness, we will fit a second multi-level regression model including main effects of age group, boxes opened on trial t−1, and size of missed opportunity on trial t−1, and, crucially, the interaction between size of missed opportunities and log(age) as predictors. Similar analyses will be conducted to explore the interaction of missed opportunities and autistic traits for presentation at SRCD.

Authors

• Leila Iliffe-Hodgetts, University of Birmingham
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer Cook, University of Birmingham
  Non-Presenting Author

• Danielle Ropar, University of Nottingham
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Beck, University of Birmingham
  Non-Presenting Author