Initiative apathy trait underlies individual differences in the ability to anticipate and expend cognitive effort in cost-benefit decision-making tasks

Abstract

Initiative apathy is the most disabling form of apathy, prevalent both in neuropsychiatric pathologies and in the healthy population. This apathy has been specifically associated with functional abnormalities of the anterior cingulate cortex, a key structure underlying effort-based decision-making. The main aim of the present study was to explore, for the first time, the cognitive and neural effort mechanisms of initiative apathy, by distinguishing the steps of effort anticipation and effort expenditure and the potential modulating effect of motivation. We conducted an EEG study in 23 subjects with specific subclinical initiative apathy and 24 healthy subjects with no apathy. The subjects had to compete two effort tasks. The analysis of behavioral choices, CNV, and mPFC theta power highlighted that initiative apathy is associated with effort avoidance and impairments of effort anticipation and effort expenditure that suggest effort-based decision-making deficits. Better knowledge of these impairments should aid the development of new, more targeted therapeutic interventions necessary for reducing the debilitating consequences of initiative apathy.

Taking Note of Our Biases: How Language Patterns Reveal Bias Underlying the Use of Office Discipline Referrals in Exclusionary Discipline

“…On the one hand, consistent with psychological theory (Yzerbyt et al, 1994), teachers may feel the need to overexplain, or elaborate in greater detail, why they are disciplining Black students compared to White students in order to satisfy the need to justify their decision and not appear discriminatory (see Hodson et al, 2002). On the other hand, teachers may use fewer words, as a reflection of effort, when describing why they disciplined Black versus White students if they felt apathetic or negatively toward the Black students (Bishop, 1989; Lafond-Brina et al, 2023). We therefore explored how the number of words used to describe a discipline referral differed based on the demographic characteristics of the student.…”