Confirmatory Reinforcement Learning Changes with Age during Adolescence

Autor/inn/en	Chierchia, Gabriele; Soukupová, Magdaléna; Kilford, Emma J.; Griffin, Cait; Leung, Jovita; Palminteri, Stefano; Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne
Titel	Confirmatory Reinforcement Learning Changes with Age during Adolescence
Quelle	In: Developmental Science, 26 (2023) 3, (15 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Chierchia, Gabriele) ORCID (Soukupová, Magdaléna) ORCID (Kilford, Emma J.) ORCID (Griffin, Cait) ORCID (Leung, Jovita) ORCID (Palminteri, Stefano) ORCID (Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1363-755X
DOI	10.1111/desc.13330
Schlagwörter	Reinforcement; Learning Processes; Developmental Stages; Adolescents; Rewards; Accuracy; Punishment; Age Differences; Cognitive Style; Bias + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Positive Verstärkung; Learning process; Lernprozess; Adolescent; Adolescence; Adoleszenz; Jugend; Jugendalter; Jugendlicher; Reward; Belohnung; Bestrafung; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Cognitive styles; Kognitiver Stil
Abstract	Understanding how learning changes during human development has been one of the long-standing objectives of developmental science. Recently, advances in computational biology have demonstrated that humans display a bias when learning to navigate novel environments through rewards and punishments: they learn more from outcomes that confirm their expectations than from outcomes that disconfirm them. Here, we ask whether confirmatory learning is stable across development, or whether it might be attenuated in developmental stages in which exploration is beneficial, such as in adolescence. In a reinforcement learning (RL) task, 77 participants aged 11-32 years (four men, mean age = 16.26) attempted to maximize monetary rewards by repeatedly sampling different pairs of novel options, which varied in their reward/punishment probabilities. Mixed-effect models showed an age-related increase in accuracy as long as learning contingencies remained stable across trials, but less so when they reversed halfway through the trials. Age was also associated with a greater tendency to stay with an option that had just delivered a reward, more than to "switch" away from an option that had just delivered a punishment. At the computational level, a confirmation model provided increasingly better fit with age. This model showed that age differences are captured by decreases in noise or exploration, rather than in the magnitude of the confirmation bias. These findings provide new insights into how learning changes during development and could help better tailor learning environments to people of different ages. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01