Associations between aversive learning processes and transdiagnostic psychiatric symptoms in a general population sample

Wise, Toby; Dolan, Raymond J.

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17977-w

Cited by 67 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…In addition, the US-validation and memory tasks confirmed that participants paid adequate attention to the US and perceived them according to their normative ratings. This is well in line with studies demonstrating that cognitive and affective processes can be validly studied with minimal costs using smartphone- or web-based paradigms 26 , 27 , 56 , 57 .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Associative learning shapes visual discrimination in a web-based classical conditioning task

Stegmann

Andreatta

Pauli

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Threat detection plays a vital role in adapting behavior to changing environments. A fundamental function to improve threat detection is learning to differentiate between stimuli predicting danger and safety. Accordingly, aversive learning should lead to enhanced sensory discrimination of danger and safety cues. However, studies investigating the psychophysics of visual and auditory perception after aversive learning show divergent findings, and both enhanced and impaired discrimination after aversive learning have been reported. Therefore, the aim of this web-based study is to examine the impact of aversive learning on a continuous measure of visual discrimination. To this end, 205 participants underwent a differential fear conditioning paradigm before and after completing a visual discrimination task using differently oriented grating stimuli. Participants saw either unpleasant or neutral pictures as unconditioned stimuli (US). Results demonstrated sharpened visual discrimination for the US-associated stimulus (CS+), but not for the unpaired conditioned stimuli (CS−). Importantly, this finding was irrespective of the US’s valence. These findings suggest that associative learning results in increased stimulus salience, which facilitates perceptual discrimination in order to prioritize attentional deployment.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Associative learning shapes visual discrimination in a web-based classical conditioning task

Stegmann

Andreatta

Pauli

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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“…It is also important to stress that, in order to facilitate remote administration, the 'aversive' outcome used in this task is highly unlikely to evoke 'fear' in the same way as stimuli used in previous work (e.g., painful electric shock). Although previous experimental tasks have successfully used monetary or game points loss in place of more primary aversive outcomes to discover differences in learning related to self-reported anxiety and PTSD symptoms (e.g., Norbury et al, 2018;Brown et al, 2018;Wise & Dolan, 2020), more evidence is needed that the outcome employed here is engaging the kind of cognitive processes relevant to processing of traumatic experience. Future studies using this framework will therefore explicitly probe aversiveness of the loss outcome to study participants, and further, attempt to increase emotional engagement with the task by using more immersive graphics and taking a more gamified approach to task presentation (see Nord et al, 2017;Wise & Dolan, 2020, for successful examples of this approach).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although previous experimental tasks have successfully used monetary or game points loss in place of more primary aversive outcomes to discover differences in learning related to self-reported anxiety and PTSD symptoms (e.g., Norbury et al, 2018;Brown et al, 2018;Wise & Dolan, 2020), more evidence is needed that the outcome employed here is engaging the kind of cognitive processes relevant to processing of traumatic experience. Future studies using this framework will therefore explicitly probe aversiveness of the loss outcome to study participants, and further, attempt to increase emotional engagement with the task by using more immersive graphics and taking a more gamified approach to task presentation (see Nord et al, 2017;Wise & Dolan, 2020, for successful examples of this approach). Another important difference between the data presented here and that from some previous investigations is that there was no significant temporal delay between the two extinction training sessions, such that we are unlikely to be probing 'recall' of associations from longer-term memory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latent cause inference during extinction learning in trauma-exposed individuals with and without PTSD

et al. 2021

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Background Problems in learning that sights, sounds, or situations that were once associated with danger have become safe (extinction learning) may explain why some individuals suffer prolonged psychological distress following traumatic experiences. Although simple learning models have been unable to provide a convincing account of why this learning fails, it has recently been proposed that this may be explained by individual differences in beliefs about the causal structure of the environment. Methods Here, we tested two competing hypotheses as to how differences in causal inference might be related to trauma-related psychopathology, using extinction learning data collected from clinically well-characterised individuals with varying degrees of post-traumatic stress (N = 56). Model parameters describing individual differences in causal inference were related to multiple post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression symptom dimensions via network analysis. Results Individuals with more severe PTSD were more likely to assign observations from conditioning and extinction stages to a single underlying cause. Specifically, greater re-experiencing symptom severity was associated with a lower likelihood of inferring that multiple causes were active in the environment. Conclusions We interpret these results as providing evidence of a primary deficit in discriminative learning in participants with more severe PTSD. Specifically, a tendency to attribute a greater diversity of stimulus configurations to the same underlying cause resulted in greater uncertainty about stimulus-outcome associations, impeding learning both that certain stimuli were safe, and that certain stimuli were no longer dangerous. In the future, better understanding of the role of causal inference in trauma-related psychopathology may help refine cognitive therapies for these disorders.

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“…It is also important to stress that, in order to facilitate remote administration, the 'aversive' outcome used in this task is highly unlikely to evoke 'fear' in the same way as stimuli used in previous work (e.g., painful electric shock). Although previous experimental tasks have successfully used monetary or game points loss in place of more primary aversive outcomes to discover differences in learning related to self-reported anxiety (e.g., Norbury et al, 2018;Wise & Dolan, 2020), more evidence is needed that the outcome employed here is engaging the kind of cognitive processes relevant to learning and extinction related to traumatic experience. Future studies using this framework will therefore attempt to increase emotional engagement with the task, by using more immersive graphics and overall taking a more gamified approach to task presentation and will also explicitly probe aversiveness of the loss outcome to study participants (see Nord et al, 2017;Wise & Dolan, 2020, for a successful examples of this strategy).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latent cause inference during extinction learning in trauma-exposed individuals with and without PTSD

Norbury¹,

Brinkman²,

Kowalchyk³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Problems in learning that sights, sounds, or situations that were once associated with danger have become safe (extinction learning) may explain why some individuals suffer prolonged psychological distress following traumatic experiences. Although simple associative learning models have been unable to provide a convincing account of how and why this learning fails, it has recently been proposed that this may be explained by individual differences in beliefs about the causal structure of the environment. Here, we tested two competing hypotheses as to how differences in causal inference might be related to trauma-related psychopathology, using extinction learning data collected from clinically well-characterized individuals with varying degrees of post-traumatic stress (N=56). Latent cause modelling revealed that individuals with more severe PTSD were more likely to assign observations from conditioning and extinction stages to a single underlying cause. Specifically, multivariate analysis incorporating multiple PTSD and depression symptom dimensions revealed a negative relationship between tendency to infer multiple causes were active in the environment and re-experiencing symptom severity. We interpret these results as providing evidence of a primary deficit in discriminative learning in participants with more severe PTSD re-experiencing symptoms. Specifically, in these individuals, a greater tendency to attribute all stimulus configurations to the same underlying cause resulted in greater uncertainty about stimulus-outcome associations, and impeded learning both that certain stimuli were safe, and that certain stimuli were no longer dangerous. Better understanding of the role of causal inference in trauma-related psychopathology may have relevance for the refinement of cognitive therapies for these disorders.

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Associations between aversive learning processes and transdiagnostic psychiatric symptoms in a general population sample

Cited by 67 publications

References 75 publications

Associative learning shapes visual discrimination in a web-based classical conditioning task

Associative learning shapes visual discrimination in a web-based classical conditioning task

Latent cause inference during extinction learning in trauma-exposed individuals with and without PTSD

Latent cause inference during extinction learning in trauma-exposed individuals with and without PTSD

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