A study of pitch judgements found reduced neural responses to incorrect answers in autistic participants, offering clues to differences in decision-making and adapting to change.
Autistic people may be less sensitive to feedback about their own performance, according to a new study in JNeurosci that could help explain why some struggle to adjust when circumstances change. The research was led by Nathaniel Zuk of Nottingham Trent University and Jaroslav Slobodskoy-Plusnin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, working with colleagues at University College London and Hebrew University. Their findings add to a growing body of work suggesting that differences in how the brain processes feedback may affect decision-making and adaptability in autism.
In the experiment, participants listened to pairs of pitches and judged whether they were the same or different before receiving feedback on their answers. The researchers then measured brain activity linked to negative feedback and found that autistic participants showed a weaker neural response than those without autism. News-Medical reported that this pattern points to a reduced sensitivity to external feedback, such as being told a response was incorrect, which may make it harder to update behaviour in response to changing demands.
The team also looked at whether confidence shaped these reactions. According to the report, people with autism were less influenced by changes in task difficulty, suggesting that feedback processing remained comparatively muted even when the task became easier or harder. By contrast, non-autistic participants adjusted their behaviour more noticeably after easy trials, with earlier pitch patterns appearing to bias later choices when they had performed well. That difference implies that internal signals, such as a person’s own sense of confidence, may interact differently with feedback in autistic and non-autistic people.
The researchers said their work supports the idea that autism may affect sensitivity to both external information and internal judgement when decisions are made. They suggested that future studies should examine how these effects are represented in the brain, particularly in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in monitoring performance and detecting errors. Related summaries of the study note that the findings may help explain why some autistic people find it harder to adapt to shifting environments, while also strengthening the case for reduced task-monitoring as a possible biomarker of autism.
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