Valuation in major depression is intact and stable in a non-learning environment

Chung, Dongil; Kadlec, Kelly; Aimone, Jason A.; McCurry, Katherine; King‐Casas, Brooks; Chiu, Pearl H.

doi:10.1038/srep44374

Cited by 27 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(77 reference statements)

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“…Consistent with previous studies on decision-making about risky and ambiguous gambles (4,5,10,11), participants on average exhibited both risk aversion (vs. risk-neutrality: t(97) = -6.22, P = 1.27e-08; Fig. 3a) and ambiguity aversion (vs. ambiguity-neutrality: t(97) = 8.32, P = 5.63e-13; Fig.…”

Section: Main Textsupporting

confidence: 89%

Evidence for preference consistency across risky, ambiguous, and vague gambles

Chung¹,

Kadlec²,

Ball³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Humans have variable preferences over the uncertainty of potential outcomes during decision-making. To date, most uncertainty research has focused on how individuals form subjective values of risky and ambiguous choices where uncertainty results from known or unknown outcome variability, rather than exploring situations where outcome values are uncertain. Here we examine 'vagueness,' defined as a specific form of uncertainty in which a player is informed only that the outcome of a decision lies somewhere within a known range of values. We use a model-based approach and an experimental gambling task to examine whether individuals evaluate uncertainty in outcome values differently from uncertainty in the probability of the outcomes. Our results show that subjective valuation of vagueness, risk, and ambiguity depend upon individuals' distinct preferences for the first and second moments of gamble outcomes, indicating that individuals have preferences for uncertainty in mean outcome values and outcome variability, respectively, that guide decision-making across types of uncertain situations.

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Section: Main Textsupporting

confidence: 89%

Evidence for preference consistency across risky, ambiguous, and vague gambles

Chung¹,

Kadlec²,

Ball³

et al. 2017

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Our results provide new evidence that depression-related reward learning deficits are highly context-dependent (3–5) , and suggest that the differences in learning rates associated with depressive symptoms may only arise in social contexts (5, 9) . Crucially, our results suggest that supposedly neutral aspects of the experimental setup (such as whether or not the task is done in the presence or absence of an experimenter), may affect the results and explain inconsistent findings (42) .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 55%

Social information impairs reward learning in depressive subjects: behavioral and computational characterization

Safra

Chevallier

Palminteri

2018

Preprint

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Social information impairs reward learning in depressive subjects: behavioral and 2 computational characterization 3 4 5 Abstract (max 218/250) 16 Depression is characterized by a marked decrease in social interactions and blunted sensitivity 17 to rewards. Surprisingly, despite the importance of social deficits in depression, non-social 18 aspects have been disproportionally investigated. As a consequence, the cognitive 19 mechanisms underlying atypical decision-making in social contexts in depression are poorly 20 understood. In the present study, we investigate whether deficits in reward processing interact 21 with the social context and how this interaction is affected by self-reported depression and 22 anxiety symptoms. Two cohorts of subjects (discovery and replication sample: N = 50 each) 23 took part in a task involving reward learning in a social context with different levels of social 24 information (absent, partial and complete). Behavioral analyses revealed a specific detrimental 25 effect of depressive symptoms -but not anxiety -on behavioral performance in the presence 26 of social information, i.e. when participants were informed about the choices of another player. 27Model-based analyses further characterized the computational nature of this deficit as a 28 negative audience effect, rather than a deficit in the way others' choices and rewards are 29 integrated in decision making. To conclude, our results shed light on the cognitive and 30 computational mechanisms underlying the interaction between social cognition, reward 31 learning and decision-making in depressive disorders. 32 33 Page 3 of 29 MAIN TEXT 34 35 36 37One of the core clinical symptoms of depression is anhedonia, which refers to a reduced 38 motivation to engage in daily life activities (motivational anhedonia) and a reduced enjoyment 39 of usually enjoyable activities (consummatory anhedonia) (1, 2). In principle, this clinical 40 manifestation could be explained by reduced reward sensitivity, both in terms of incentive 41 motivation and in terms of reinforcement processes (3-5). A direct prediction of this hypothesis 42 is that depressive symptoms should be associated with reduced reward sensitivity in learning 43 contexts both at the behavioral and neural level. However, while some studies do find 44 evidence that depressive symptoms in the general population and in clinical depression are 45 associated with blunted reward learning and reward-related signals in the brain (6, 7), others 46 indicate no (8, 9) or mixed effects (5). As a consequence, there is no strong consensus about 47 which components of reward processing are most predictive of depressive symptoms in both 48 the general population and clinical depression (5). 50Another striking clinical manifestation of depressed symptoms is a marked decrease in social 51 interactions. Depression is indeed associated with social risk factors, social impairments and 52 poor social functioning (10). Surprisingly, despite the importance of the socio-cognitive 53 impairments that ...

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“…Because in the model, reward sensitivity could not be dissociated from stochasticity per se, this provides evidence for increased decision randomness in depression. In contrast, another recent study [ 157 ] that used a decision-making task, based only on explicitly shown, rather than learnt values, found no effect of depression on choice stochasticity. Overall it thus remains unclear whether the decision deficits reported in depression are truly deficits in the comparison process.…”

Section: Valuation and Decision-makingmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…Basic tests such as the sucrose liking test [ [154] , [155] ] show no difference between healthy controls and patients suffering from depression. Similarly, ratings of cartoon images with emotional content were found to be unchanged in depression [ 156 ] and a recent study deploying a computational model to assess valuation of gambles in the absence of learning found no difference between patients suffering from depression and controls [ 157 ]. By contrast, other studies have found reactions to emotional stimuli to appear blunted in depression.…”

Section: Valuation and Decision-makingmentioning

confidence: 99%