The elusive effects of incidental anxiety on reinforcement-learning.
9
Citation
72
Reference
10
Related Paper
Citation Trend
Abstract:
Anxiety is a common affective state, characterized by the subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over an anticipated event. Anxiety is suspected to have important negative consequences on cognition, decision-making, and learning. Yet, despite a recent surge in studies investigating the specific effects of anxiety on reinforcement-learning, no coherent picture has emerged. Here, we investigated the effects of incidental anxiety on instrumental reinforcement-learning, while addressing several issues and defaults identified in a focused literature review. We used a rich experimental design, featuring both a learning and a transfer phase, and a manipulation of outcomes valence (gains vs losses). In two variants (N = 2 × 50) of this experimental paradigm, incidental anxiety was induced with an established threat-of-shock paradigm. Model-free results show that incidental anxiety effects seem limited to a small, but specific increase in postlearning performance measured by a transfer task. A comprehensive modeling effort revealed that, irrespective of the effects of anxiety, individuals give more weight to positive than negative outcomes, and tend to experience the omission of a loss as a gain (and vice versa). However, in line with results from our targeted literature survey, isolating specific computational effects of anxiety on learning per se proved to be challenging. Overall, our results suggest that learning mechanisms are more complex than traditionally presumed, and raise important concerns about the robustness of the effects of anxiety previously identified in simple reinforcement-learning studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).Keywords:
PsycINFO
Salience (neuroscience)
PsycINFO
Content (measure theory)
Cite
Citations (0)
This Guide gives tips for searching the PsycINFO database, published by the American Psychological Association. This section will explain what the PsycINFO Thesaurus is and how it can be useful to researchers.
PsycINFO
Cite
Citations (0)
An attempt was made to modify a socially desirable response of mental patients. It was found that instructions to the patients had no enduring effect unless accompanied by reinforcement. Also, it was found that reinforcement was not effective unless the reinforcement procedure was accompanied by instructions that specified the basis for the reinforcement. Maximum change in behavior was obtained when the reinforcement procedure took advantage of the existing verbal repertoire of the patients. A significant methodological finding was that substantial modification of the behavior of psychotics could be achieved by briefly delaying, rather than withholding, food reinforcement.
Cite
Citations (208)
This research guide will assist students locate relevant articles on their topic using the EBSCOhost PsycINFO Database & will focus on searching strategies using keywords as well as how to locate controlled language using the Thesaurus.
PsycINFO
Cite
Citations (0)
Positive reinforcement was more effective than negative reinforcement in promoting compliance and reducing escape‐maintained problem behavior for a child with autism. Escape extinction was then added while the child was given a choice between positive or negative reinforcement for compliance and the reinforcement schedule was thinned. When the reinforcement requirement reached 10 consecutive tasks, the treatment effects became inconsistent and reinforcer selection shifted from a strong preference for positive reinforcement to an unstable selection pattern.
Extinction (optical mineralogy)
Cite
Citations (77)
Those interested in tracking trends in the history of psychology cannot simply trust the numbers produced by inputting terms into search engines like PsycINFO and then constraining by date.This essay is therefore a critical engagement with that longstanding interest to show what it is possible to do, over what period, and why.It concludes that certain projects simply cannot be undertaken without further investment by the American Psychological Association.This is because forgotten changes in the assumptions informing the database make its index terms untrustworthy for use in trendtracking before 1967.But they can indeed be used, with care, to track more recent trends.The result is then a Distant Reading of psychology, with Digital History presented as enabling a kind of Science Studies that psychologists will find appealing.The present state of the discipline can thus be caricatured as the contemporary scientific study of depressed rats and the drugs used to treat them (as well as of human brains, mice, and myriad other topics).To extend the investigation back further in time, however, the 1967 boundary is also investigated.The author then delves more deeply into the prehistory of the database's creation, and shows in a précis of a further project that the origins of PsycINFO can be traced to interests related to American national security during the Cold War.In short: PsycINFO cannot be treated as a simple bibliographic description of the discipline.It is embedded in its history, and reflects it.
PsycINFO
History of psychology
Cite
Citations (19)
This study examined the effects of reinforcement and reinforcement plus information on both appropriate and inappropriate behavior in subjects provided with direct reinforcement and those seated adjacent to them. Four female kindergarten subjects who were of average intelligence were chosen on the basis of engaging in a relatively high percentage of inappropriate behavior. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of two pairs and within each pair, one subject was randomly designated as the one to be administered direct reinforcement (target subject). The remaining subject in each pair (non-target subject) received no direct reinforcement but was seated adjacent to the target subject. Each pair of the subjects were then exposed to seven experimental conditions: baseline, reinforcement for appropriate behavior, reversal, reinforcement f or inappropriate behavior, reinforcement for appropriate behavior with information about the contingencies, reinforcement for inappropriate behavior with information about the contingencies, reinforcement for appropriate behavior with information about the contingencies. Changes in the non-target subjects were observed as a function of witnessing a target subject receive reinforcement for appropriate behavior. When inappropriate behavior was reinforced in the target subjects, only slight changes were observed in the non-target subjects. Information about the contingencies increased the effectiveness of reinforcement in all subjects. This was particularly relevant to inappropriate behavior. The results are discussed with regard to the vicarious reinforcement literature and with regard to the efficacy of providing information along with reinforcement in order to augment it.
Cite
Citations (0)
A differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior (DRO) schedule with trials and delayed reinforcement was investigated. Periodically a wheel was briefly available to rats, followed six seconds later by brief availability of a bar. Variable-ratio food reinforcement of wheel turns was adjusted to give 95% turns. After variable-ratio-five reinforcement of bar presses produced 100% pressing, then separate ratio schedules were used for presses following turns (turn presses) and presses following nonturns (nonturn presses). Increasing nonturn-press reinforcements decreased turns, even though total reinforcements increased. Reversal by decreasing nonturn-press reinforcements raised turns, though with hysteresis. Thus food reinforcement increased nonturns even though delayed six to ten seconds after nonturns, a delay that greatly reduces response reinforcement. Those and other results indicate that the turn decrease was not due to reinforcement of competing responses. Evidence against other alternatives, and the reduction of responding by increased reinforcement, indicate that the term inhibition is appropriate for the phenomenon reinforced. Response-specific inhibition appears appropriate for this particular kind, since its effects are more specific to particular responses than Pavlovian conditioned-inhibition. Response-specific inhibition seems best considered a behavioral output comparable to responses (e.g., both reinforcible) but with important properties different from responses (e.g., different reinforcement-delay gradients).
Differential reinforcement
Bar (unit)
Cite
Citations (9)
In order to obtain the study of the bonding properties between the reinforcement-concrete and give full play to the material properties, a lot of research has been carried out on reinforcement-concrete. Existing reinforcement-concrete studies contain mainly reinforcement-concrete bonds, reinforcement lap, and anchorage of reinforcement. The reinforcement-concrete bond test mainly measures the bond-slip curve between the two to determine the bond strength between reinforcement and concrete. The reinforcement lap test is mainly used for the performance study of the anchorage length of reinforcement in concrete, whether the lap bars are in contact with each other, which can be divided into two forms: contact lap and indirect lap. The anchorage test of reinforcement is conducted to study the reduction of the connection length between reinforcement and concrete while meeting the force requirements. According to a large number of tests, the bond strength of the reinforcement is affected by the shape of the mixed reinforcement, the thickness of the protective layer of the diameter concrete, the spacing of the reinforcement, the transverse reinforcement restraint, and the material properties of the reinforcement and concrete. This paper discusses the test methods, influencing factors, and the lack of existing research in the study of the performance of reinforcement-concrete bonding, and lap and anchorage properties.
Cite
Citations (1)
This Guide gives tips for searching the PsycINFO database, published by the American Psychological Association. This section will explain how PsycINFO allows you to look directly for who has cited a particular reference.
PsycINFO
Section (typography)
Cite
Citations (0)