Abstract:
Background
Effort can take a variety of forms including physical (e.g., button-pressing) and
cognitive (e.g., working memory tasks). Few studies have examined whether individual
differences in willingness to expend are similar or different across modalities.
Methods
We recruited 30 individuals with schizophrenia and 44 healthy controls to complete
two effort-cost decision-making (ECDM) tasks, the effort expenditure for rewards task
(EEfRT: physical effort) and the cognitive effort-discounting task (COGED: cognitive
effort).
Results
Willingness to expend cognitive and physical effort was positively associated for
both those with schizophrenia and controls. Further, we found that individual differences
in motivation and pleasure (MAP) dimension of negative symptoms modulated the association
between physical and cognitive effort. Specifically, participants with lower MAP scores,
irrespective of group status, showed a stronger associations between task measures of cognitive and physical ECDM.
Conclusions
These results suggest a generalized deficit across effort modalities in those with
schizophrenia. Further, reductions in motivation and pleasure may impact ECDM in a
domain-general manner.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
February 7,
2023
Received in revised form:
January 9,
2023
Received:
August 23,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofFootnotes
Author Contributions:
Conceptualization: AJC, EKM, DMB
Methodology: AJC, EKM, DMB, SDD
Formal Analysis: AJC, EKM, DMB, SDD
Investigation: AJC, EKM, DMB, SDD
Writing – Original Draft Preparation: AJC, EKM, DMB, SDD
Writing – Review & Editing: AJC, EKM, DMB, SDD
Disclosures: The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2023 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
