Preferential Choice to Exert Cognitive Effort in Children with ADHD: a Diffusion Modelling Account
Open Access
- Author:
- Yan, Xu
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- October 08, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Cynthia L Huang-Pollock, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Stephen Jeffrey Wilson, Committee Member
Kristin Buss (She/Her), Program Head/Chair
Emily B Ansell, Committee Member - Keywords:
- ADHD
diffusion modeling
cognitive effort
metacognitive monitoring
cognitive control - Abstract:
- Background: Motivation deficits have long been implicated in the development and maintenance of ADHD, but study designs based on reward-based improvement remains inconclusive due to potential ceiling effects and limits in the range of reward tested. Preferential choice to engage in demanding tasks may be a better measure of motivation. Methods: Children aged 8-12 with (n = 49) and without (n = 36) ADHD were administered the cognitive effort discounting paradigm (COG-ED, adapted from Westbrook et al., 2013) to determine the value children place on effort. Diffusion modelling decomposition of performance provided additional insight into the choice process. Results: As expected, all children showed evidence of effort discounting, and discounting choices did not differ by ADHD status. However, children with greater accuracy on the effortful N-back task had steeper discounting curves than children with lower accuracy due to a better mental representation of demand. This was evidenced by greater decision difficulty (v) and response caution (a) to decisions that included higher task loads. Those with ADHD were overrepresented in the group with lower N-back accuracy; they also showed a smaller increase in decision difficulty (v) to decisions that included higher task loads, indicating a less differentiated representation of demand. Conclusions: All children demonstrated some capacity for monitoring of task demand, but better performance on the effortful task predicted more accurate metacognitive monitoring. Children with ADHD may have a subtle deficit in demand evaluation, which can impede their adaptive engagement of cognitive effort/control.