Altered learning under uncertainty in unmedicated mood and anxiety disorders

Jessica Aylward, Vincent Valton, Woo-Young Ahn, Rebecca L. Bond, Peter Dayan, Jonathan P. Roiser and Oliver J. Robinson ()
Additional contact information
Jessica Aylward: University College London
Vincent Valton: University College London
Woo-Young Ahn: Seoul National University
Rebecca L. Bond: University College London
Peter Dayan: University College London
Jonathan P. Roiser: University College London
Oliver J. Robinson: University College London

Nature Human Behaviour, 2019, vol. 3, issue 10, 1116-1123

Abstract: Abstract Anxiety is characterized by altered responses under uncertain conditions, but the precise mechanism by which uncertainty changes the behaviour of anxious individuals is unclear. Here we probe the computational basis of learning under uncertainty in healthy individuals and individuals suffering from a mix of mood and anxiety disorders. Participants were asked to choose between four competing slot machines with fluctuating reward and punishment outcomes during safety and stress. We predicted that anxious individuals under stress would learn faster about punishments and exhibit choices that were more affected by those punishments, thus formalizing our predictions as parameters in reinforcement learning accounts of behaviour. Overall, the data suggest that anxious individuals are quicker to update their behaviour in response to negative outcomes (increased punishment learning rates). When treating anxiety, it may therefore be more fruitful to encourage anxious individuals to integrate information over longer horizons when bad things happen, rather than try to blunt their responses to negative outcomes.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0628-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:3:y:2019:i:10:d:10.1038_s41562-019-0628-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0628-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().