IntroductionOur ability to learn associations between events with rewarding or punishing outcomes plays an important role in guiding our behaviour.1 Of equal importance is our capacity to successfully alter established associations to maximize performance when the environment requires us to change our behaviour. When an event that previously led to reward (event A) currently leads to punishment and when a previously punished event (event B) now yields a reward, the optimal behaviour would be to reverse the initial response tendencies by starting to respond to event B instead of event A. This principle is a driving force behind a form of behavioural adaptation known as response reversal. Response reversal can be defined as a change of behaviour following a reversal of the previously established relationships between events and their reinforcing value.2 Response reversal contributes to flexibility in behaviour, both under social and nonsocial circumstances .3 The amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) have been shown to play a crucial role in response reversal. 3,4The amygdala has been linked to the establishment of stimulus-outcome associations, 5 whereas the OFC has been Background: Psychopathy is a severe personality disorder that has been linked to impaired behavioural adaptation during reinforcement learning. Recent electrophysiological studies have suggested that psychopathy is related to impairments in intentionally using information relevant for adapting behaviour, whereas these impairments remain absent for behaviour relying on automatic use of information. We sought to investigate whether previously found impairments in response reversal in individuals with psychopathy also follow this dichotomy. We expected response reversal to be intact when the automatic use of information was facilitated. In contrast, we expected impaired response reversal when intentional use of information was required. Methods: We included offenders with psychopathy and matched healthy controls in 2 experiments with a probabilistic cued go/no-go reaction time task. The task implicated the learning and reversal of 2 predictive contingencies. In experiment 1, participants were not informed about the inclusion of a learning component, thus making cue-dependent learning automatic/ incidental. In experiment 2, the instructions required participants to actively monitor and learn predictive relationships, giving learning a controlled/intentional nature. Results: While there were no significant group differences in acquisition learning in either experiment, the results revealed impaired response reversal in offenders with psychopathy when controlled learning was facilitated. Interestingly, this impairment was absent when automatic learning was predominant. Limitations: Possible limitations are the use of a nonforensic control group and of self-report measures for drug use. Conclusion: Response reversal deficits in individuals with psychopathy are modulated by the context provided by the instructions, according to the distinction between ...

Offenders with psychopathy have often committed crimes violating social norms, which may suggest a biased moral reasoning in psychopathy. Yet, as findings on utilitarian decisions remain conflicting, the current study investigated different aspects of fairness considerations in offenders with psychopathy, offenders without psychopathy and healthy individuals (N = 18/14/18, respectively). Unfair offers in a modified Ultimatum Game (UG) were paired with different unselected alternatives, thereby establishing the context of a proposal, and made under opposing intentionality constraints (intentional vs. unintentional). As in previous studies, unfair offers were most often rejected when the alternative was fair and when the offer was made intentionally. Importantly, however, offenders with psychopathy demonstrated a similar rejection pattern to that of healthy individuals, i.e., taking the unselected alternative into account. In contrast, delinquents without psychopathy did not adjust their decision behavior to the alternatives to an offer, suggesting stronger impairments in social decision-making. Crucially, the mechanisms and processes underlying rejection decisions might differ, particularly with regard to cognitive vs. emotional competencies. While preserved cognitive perspective-taking could drive seemingly intact decision patterns in psychopathy, emotional empathy is likely to be compromised.

Errorless learning (EL) is an approach in which errors are eliminated or reduced as much as possible while learning of new information or skills. In contrast, during trial-and-error − or errorful − learning (TEL) errors are not reduced and are often even promoted. There is a complex and conflicting pattern of evidence whether EL or TEL may result in better memory performance. One major confound in the extant literature is that most EL studies have not controlled for the number of errors made during TEL, resulting in a large variability in the amount of errors committed. This variability likely explains why studies on the cognitive underpinnings of EL and TEL have produced mixed findings. In this study, a novel objectlocation learning task was employed to examine EL and TEL in 30 healthy young adults. The number of errors was systematically manipulated, allowing us to investigate the impact of frequency of errors on learning outcome. The results showed that recall from memory was significantly better during EL. However, the number of errors made during TEL did not influence the performance in young adults. Altogether, our novel paradigm is promising for measuring EL and TEL, allowing for more accurate analyses to understand the impact of error frequency on a person's learning ability and style.

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Background Healthy aging is accompanied by a decline in learning ability and memory capacity. One widely-studied method to improve learning outcome is by reducing the occurrence of errors during learning (errorless learning; EL). However, there is also evidence that committing errors during learning (trial-and-error learning; TEL) may benefit memory performance. We argue that these inconsistent findings could be driven by a lack of control over the error frequency in traditional EL and TEL paradigms. Aim This study employed a spatial learning task to study EL and TEL and to determine the impact of error frequency on memory recall in healthy older adults (OA; N = 68) and young adults (YA; N = 60). Method Four groups of participants (YA-EL, YA-TEL, OA-EL, OA-TEL) were instructed to first place and memorize the locations of everyday objects in a chest of drawers presented on a computer screen, and in whom memory recall performance was later tested. In the TEL condition, the amount of errors made before the correct drawer was ‘found’ was predetermined, varying from 0 to 5. During the EL condition, every first attempt was correct (i.e., no errors were made). Results We found better overall performance in YA compared to OA and a beneficial effect of EL in both age groups. However, the amount of errors committed during learning did not influence accuracy of memory recall. Conclusion Our results indicate that elimination of errors during learning can benefit memory performance in both YA and OA compared to TEL.

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Alzheimer's disease is characterized by a decline in episodic memory and executive functioning, hampering learning ability. Insight into outcome‐based learning capacity may be relevant for optimizing the learning potential of these patients. To date, mixed results have been found in studies in which cognitively impaired participants have to learn based on positive and negative outcomes. In this study, we investigated the role of negative and positive feedback on memory performance and participants' ability to adjust their behaviour accordingly in a sample of 23 early‐stage AD patients and 23 matched healthy controls. We administered a novel computerized object‐location memory task, in which participants were instructed to learn and memorize the locations of different everyday objects following errorless learning (EL) and trial‐and‐error learning (TEL). A separate probabilistic TEL task was employed in which participants had to learn how to adjust their behaviour based on positive and negative feedback. EL had a beneficial general effect on memory performance for object locations. However, this effect was not larger in early‐stage AD patients compared to controls and error frequency during acquisition of object locations was unrelated to later recall performance. No group differences were found on the probabilistic learning task with respect to learning performance over time and based on positive and negative feedback. Although the error monitoring system seems intact in patients with early‐stage AD, errors during learning are likely acting as a source of interference causing difficulty in storage or retrieval of object locations.