Sex-dependent effects on tasks assessing reinforcement learning and interference inhibition

Abstract

Increasing evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is influenced by sex steroids and that some cognitive functions dependent on the PFC may be sexually differentiated in humans. Past work has identified a male advantage on certain complex reinforcement learning tasks, but it is unclear which latent task components are important to elicit the sex difference. The objective of the current study was to investigate whether there are sex differences on measures of response inhibition and valenced feedback processing, elements that are shared by previously studied reinforcement learning tasks. Healthy young adults (90 males, 86 females) matched in general intelligence completed the Probabilistic Selection Task (PST), a Simon task, and the Stop-Signal task. On the PST, females were more accurate than males in learning from positive (but not negative) feedback. On the Simon task, males were faster than females, especially in the face of incongruent stimuli. No sex difference was observed in Stop-Signal reaction time. The current findings provide preliminary support for a sex difference in the processing of valenced feedback and in interference inhibition.

Reversal learning in gonadectomized marmosets with and without hormone replacement: are males more sensitive to punishment?

“…Sex differences were absent in the numbers of trials to acquire the reversals, as well as in response latencies and accuracy on the DR task. This is in contrast to a few humans studies, which reported a male advantage for Reversal Learning in children (Overman 2004) and adults (Evans and Hampson 2015a, b) and a female advantage in working memory (Duff and Hampson 2001). Interestingly, Duff and Hampson (2001) also found a female advantage in the time to complete the task.…”

“…There is also growing evidence for sex differences in certain prefrontal (PFC)-dependent tasks. For example, the Iowa gambling task (IGT), in which participants must chose cards from the advantageous decks in order to amass a maximal number of points, tends to yield a male advantage (Evans and Hampson 2015a; van den Bos et al 2013). Conversely, women tend to outperform men on other spatial tasks (memory for object location), as well as tasks of verbal fluency, verbal memory (Hampson 2002) and episodic memory (Herlitz 1997).…”

“…Reversal Learning, which involves learning and reversal of stimulus–reinforcement associations and cognitive control, has been shown to critically involve the orbital and dorsal PFC in both humans (Hornak et al 2004) and marmosets (Clarke et al 2008). A few studies have reported a male advantage in certain Reversal Learning tasks in humans (Evans and Hampson 2015a). The Delayed Response task is dependent on the dorsolateral PFC and involves maintaining information in short-term memory for various periods of time (Goldman and Rosvold 1970).…”

Men Show Higher Neural Sensitivity to Wins – Large or Small – than Women in the Monetary Incentive Delay Task

“…Women compared to men tended to pick decks with lower frequency of punishment on a gambling task (31). In a study combining electroencephalography (EEG) and a guessing task with reward (or punishment) feedback, boys showed lower feedback-related negativity (FRN) and less changes in post-punishment behavior (32).…”

Sex differences in inhibitory control in socially-housed baboons (Papio papio)

“…In contrast, females appear to be advantaged in working memory tasks that emphasize monitoring and updating [40,41]. Other tasks that require inhibitory control such as the Stroop color-word task or the Stop-Signal Task have usually failed to find sex differences in performance (e.g., [42][43][44]), even though sex differences may be observed in brain activation patterns [43].…”