Understanding decision-making in autistic children and adolescents: Insights from deliberative processes and behavioral economic paradigms.

This article investigates decision-making differences between autistic and non-autistic children and adolescents aged 8–18 using the Ultimatum Game (UG) and Dictator Game (DG), focusing on explicit choices and implicit response times (RTs) alongside executive function (EF) assessments. Findings indicate that autistic participants were less likely to propose selfish (ultra-fair) offers in the DG, a behavior correlated with better organizational EF skills, and exhibited slower RTs when endorsing selfish offers in both games, suggesting a more deliberative decision-making process. Both groups showed similar aversion to unfair offers in the UG, reflecting sensitivity to fairness, but autistic individuals appeared to engage more in sociomoral reasoning when deciding on offers benefiting themselves. These results highlight the nuanced cognitive processes underlying social decision-making in autism and suggest that slower, reflective reasoning may contribute to less selfish and more fairness-oriented behaviors.