The effects of reward and frustration on the task performance of autistic children and adolescents.
Give autistic learners immediate, sure rewards and skip surprise penalties to keep accuracy high.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ghosn et al. (2023) asked autistic children and teens to tap a screen when a target picture popped up.
Sometimes they got a sticker or a "great job!" right away. Other times the game gave a loud buzz and took points away.
The team compared speed and mistakes across these reward and frustration rounds.
What they found
Rewards made the kids hit the target faster and slip up less.
Surprise buzzes raised errors more for autistic youth than for typical peers.
Predictable praise or prizes kept performance steady.
How this fits with other research
Sanford et al. (1980) and Cariveau et al. (2016) already showed that quick 1–2 second gaps between trials boost correct responding. Farah’s team adds that the reward itself must also come fast.
Williams et al. (2002) found that kids with ADHD worked harder when tokens arrived right away, not later. The same timing rule now shows up in autism.
Jennett et al. (2003) saw that free, non-contingent prizes hurt accuracy. Farah’s rewards were tied to correct taps, so accuracy rose instead of fell. The studies seem opposite until you notice contingent versus non-contingent delivery.
Why it matters
Deliver praise, tokens, or stickers the moment the learner is right. Hold off on surprise penalties; they spike errors. Keep your inter-trial pause short and your feedback predictable. These tiny timing tweaks cost nothing and can save minutes of off-task behavior every session.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Autistic individuals often exhibit social communication and socio-emotional styles that may interfere with achieving social and academic outcomes. At a more specific level, they may perform differently in various social and academic tasks due to different modes of processing rewards or unpleasant experiences (e.g., frustrating events). AIM: The present experiment examines how rewards and frustration affect the task performance of autistic children and adolescents METHODS AND PROCEDURES: An affective Posner task was applied to introduce rewards and induce frustration. Forty-four autistic children and adolescents and forty-four typically developing (TD) peers participated in this study OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Results showed that presenting social and non-social rewards resulted in shorter reaction times and lower error rates in autistic participants, but not in their TD peers. While frustration increased error rates in both autistic and TD individuals, the effect was more pronounced in the autistic group. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Social and non-social rewards help the performance of autistic children and adolescents, whereas frustration (induced through unpredictable feedback) significantly interferes with their task performance. Therefore, receiving two types of rewards and providing predictable feedback may help to improve interventions designed to optimize task performance for autistic children and adolescents.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2023 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2023.104567