Naturalistic tasks for individual differences
One difficulty in psychiatry research is that disorders are heterogeneous (e.g. two patients with depression can have completely different symptoms) and symptoms are overlapping (e.g. sleep disturbances are found across many psychiatric disorders). An alternative approach has therefore emerged that links dimensions of psychiatric disorders (e.g. anhedonia, anxiety) to behaviours in cognitive tasks.
Apathy and decision inertia (Scholl et al, 2022 )
We used the naturalistic task of Kolling & Scholl et al. (2018) described above in two large samples of participants collected over the internet (total 449 and 756 participants) who also completed standard clinical questionnaires. Among the participants, the clinical (e.g. apathy) scores of some were closer to the ‘healthy’ range, while others scored in the ‘clinically significant’ range. We found that the more apathetic participants were, the more likely they were to carry out a sequence of choices for longer than would be warranted.
Individual differences in foraging under threat (Trier et al., preprint )
We used the naturalistic foraging under threat task (Trier et al., preprint), again in two large samples over the internet who also completed questionnaires. We found that different psychiatric traits (compulsive checking, anxiety/ intolerance of uncertainty, apathy/anhedonia) had unique impacts on behaviour. For example, higher apathy scores were linked to better task performance, due to longer continuous foraging behaviour. Taking Scholl et al. [above] and this paper together, it highlights the importance of considering the situation of a behaviour -the impact of a trait like apathy can be advantageous or disadvantageous, depending on the situation. In the same study, we could also examine the impact of moment-to-moment mood on behaviour. We found that stress showed a homeostatic loop with behaviour: the more participants were stressed, the more they engaged with rewarding behaviours, which in turn reduced stress.
