Positivity effect in healthy aging in observational but not active feedback-learning

The present study investigated the impact of healthy aging on the bias to learn from positive or negative performance feedback in observational and active feedback learning. In active learning, a previous study had already shown a negative learning bias in healthy seniors older than 75 years, while no bias was found for younger seniors. However, healthy aging is accompanied by a 'positivity effect', a tendency to primarily attend to stimuli with positive valence. Based on recent findings of dissociable neural mechanisms in active and observational feedback learning, the positivity effect was hypothesized to influence older participants' observational feedback learning in particular. In two separate experiments, groups of young (mean age 27) and older participants (mean age 60 years) completed an observational or active learning task designed to differentially assess positive and negative learning. Older but not younger observational learners showed a significant bias to learn better from positive than negative feedback. In accordance with previous findings, no bias was found for active learning. This pattern of results is discussed in terms of differences in the neural underpinnings of active and observational learning from performance feedback.     

Learning to avoid in older age

The dopamine hypothesis of aging suggests that a monotonic dopaminergic decline accounts for many of the changes found in cognitive aging. The authors tested 44 older adults with a probabilistic selection task sensitive to dopaminergic function and designed to assess relative biases to learn more from positive or negative feedback. Previous studies demonstrated that low levels of dopamine lead to avoidance of those choices that lead to negative outcomes, whereas high levels of dopamine result in an increased sensitivity to positive outcomes. In the current study, age had a significant effect on the bias to avoid negative outcomes: Older seniors showed an enhanced tendency to learn from negative compared with positive consequences of their decisions. Younger seniors failed to show this negative learning bias. Moreover, the enhanced probabilistic integration of negative outcomes in older seniors was accompanied by a reduction in trial-to-trial learning from positive outcomes, thought to rely on working memory. These findings are consistent with models positing multiple neural mechanisms that support probabilistic integration and trial-to-trial behavior, which may be differentially impacted by older age.     

Age differences in the neural response to negative feedback

Affective processing is one domain that remains relatively intact in healthy aging. Investigations into the neural responses associated with reward anticipation have revealed that older and younger adults recruit the same midbrain reward regions, but other evidence suggests this recruitment may differ depending on the valence (gain, loss) of the incentive cue. The goal of the current study was to examine functional covariance during gain and loss feedback in younger and healthy older adults. A group of 15 older adults (mean age = 68.5) and 16 younger adults (mean age = 25.4) completed a revised Monetary Incentive Delay task (rMID; Knutson, Westdorp, Kaiser, &; Hommer, 2000) while in the fMRI scanner. The rMID is a reaction time task where successful performance, either gaining a reward or avoiding a loss, is defined by hitting a button during the brief presentation of a visual target. Participants receive gain and loss anticipation cues before each trial and feedback after each trial with four possible outcomes: +$5.00, +0.00, -$5.00, and -Affective processing is one domain that remains relatively intact in healthy aging. Investigations into the neural responses associated with reward anticipation have revealed that older and younger adults recruit the same midbrain reward regions, but other evidence suggests this recruitment may differ depending on the valence (gain, loss) of the incentive cue. The goal of the current study was to examine functional covariance during gain and loss feedback in younger and healthy older adults. A group of 15 older adults (mean age = 68.5) and 16 younger adults (mean age = 25.4) completed a revised Monetary Incentive Delay task (rMID; Knutson, Westdorp, Kaiser, & Hommer, 2000) while in the fMRI scanner. The rMID is a reaction time task where successful performance, either gaining a reward or avoiding a loss, is defined by hitting a button during the brief presentation of a visual target. Participants receive gain and loss anticipation cues before each trial and feedback after each trial with four possible outcomes: +$5.00, +0.00, -$5.00, and -$0.00. Using seed-voxel partial least squares analyses, with seed voxels in the caudate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, whole-brain functional covariance revealed that younger and older adults engage the same network of regions to support general feedback processing. However, older adults engaged two additional networks to support processing of negative feedback, gain_miss (+0), loss_miss (-$5), and loss_hit (?0), specifically. These findings are in line with theories of a positivity effect in aging and may have implications for reward-stimulus learning and decision making following performance-contingent negative feedback.     

Age-related differences in attentional bias for emotional faces

Past research suggests an aging-related positivity effect in orienting to faces. However, these studies have eschewed direct comparison of orienting when positive and negative faces are presented simultaneously, thereby potentially underestimating the degree to which emotional valence influences such effects. In the current study younger and older adults viewed face pairs for 1000 ms, and upon face-pair offset indicated the location of a dot that appeared in the former location of one of the faces, to assess attentional orienting. When shown negative–neutral pairs, both age groups were biased to attend to negative faces, but when shown positive–negative pairs only younger adults showed a bias toward negative; older adults showed a lack of orienting toward either emotional face. Results suggest younger adults have a negativity bias in attention orienting regardless of the valence of nearby stimuli, whereas older adults show an absence of this bias when positive information is present.     

Age-related changes in deterministic learning from positive versus negative performance feedback

Feedback-based learning declines with age. Because older adults are generally biased toward positive information (“positivity effect”), learning from positive feedback may be less impaired than learning from negative outcomes. The literature documents mixed results, due possibly to variability between studies in task design. In the current series of studies, we investigated the influence of feedback valence on reinforcement learning in young and older adults. We used nonprobabilistic learning tasks, to more systematically study the effects of feedback magnitude, learning of stimulus–response (S–R) versus stimulus–outcome (S–O) associations, and working-memory capacity. In most experiments, older adults benefitted more from positive than negative feedback, but only with large feedback magnitudes. Positivity effects were pronounced for S–O learning, whereas S–R learning correlated with working-memory capacity in both age groups. These results underline the context dependence of positivity effects in learning and suggest that older adults focus on high gains when these are informative for behavior.     

Aging and rule learning: the case of the multiplicative law

This work examined the effect of age on the ability to learn multiplicative combination rules. Participants learned the multiplicative relationship between daily tobacco intake, daily alcohol intake, and risk of esophageal cancer. The hypothesis was that younger adults would learn to implement a multiplicative combination rule and older adults would not, despite feedback. Among the younger adults, complete rule learning took place. Before receiving feedback, they used an underadditive rule, a result consistent with previous studies. After only a limited amount of feedback, they learned to use a multiplicative rule. Even after receiving feedback, however, the older adults still showed difficulties in using the multiplicative rule. These results strengthen the proposition by Chasseigne, Mullet, and Stewart (1997) that the differences between younger and older adults in function learning are related mainly to flexibility of functioning.     

An emotional Stroop task with faces and words. A comparison of young and older adults

AntecedentsGiven the contradictions of previous studies on the changes in attentional responses produced in aging a Stroop emotional task was proposed to compare young and older adults to words or faces with an emotional valence.MethodThe words happy or sad were superimposed on faces that express the emotion of happiness or sadness. The emotion expressed by the word and the face could agree or not (cued and uncued trials, respectively). 85 young and 66 healthy older adults had to identify both faces and words separately, and the interference between the two types of stimuli was examined.ResultsAn interference effect was observed for both types of stimuli in both groups. There was more interference on positive faces and words than on negative stimuli.ConclusionsOlder adults had more difficulty than younger in focusing on positive uncued trials, whereas there was no difference across samples on negative uncued trials.     

Personal relevance modulates the positivity bias in recall of emotional pictures in older adults

Some studies have suggested that older adults remember more positive than negative valence information, relative to younger adults, whereas other studies have reported no such difference. We tested whether differences in encoding instructions and in personal relevance could account for these inconsistencies. Younger and older adults were instructed either to passively view positive, negative, and neutral pictures or to actively categorize them by valence. On a subsequent incidental recall test, older adults recalled equal numbers of positive and negative pictures, whereas younger adults recalled negative pictures best. There was no effect of encoding instructions. Crucially, when the pictures were grouped into high and low personal relevance, a positivity bias emerged in older adults only for low-relevance pictures, suggesting that the personal relevance of pictures may be the factor underlying cross-study differences.     

Trust in testimony about strangers: young children prefer reliable informants who make positive attributions

Young children have been described as critical consumers of information, particularly in the domain of language learning. Indeed, children are more likely to learn novel words from people with accurate histories of object labeling than with inaccurate ones. But what happens when informant testimony conflicts with a tendency to see the world in a particular way? In impression formation, children exhibit a positivity bias in personality judgments. This study examined whether 3- to 7-year-olds would accept reliable testimony about a stranger’s personality that conflicted with a putative positivity bias (i.e., a negative trait attribution). Overall, participants accepted testimony from reliable informants more often than expected by chance, although they were significantly more likely to do so when the information was positive than when it was negative. These findings indicate that in addition to the reliability status of informants, information processing biases have a substantial impact on children’s use of informant testimony to learn about the social world.     

老年人情绪注意积极效应的发生机制

20世纪, 许多心理学家从“厄运与苦难”视角研究人晚年遭遇的身体、认知和情绪衰老, 但是近年的理论与实证研究从“老化悖论”——老年人情绪加工的积极效应——视角挑战这一“定论”。积极效应指老年人认知加工过程中比年轻人更偏好正性而非负性材料的现象。第二代社会情绪选择理论包括积极效应理论、认知控制假说和强弱整合模型3个关于认知和情绪功能年龄差异的理论模型, 特别强调了认知控制在老年人积极情绪加工中的潜在作用, 而自动化加工与控制性加工的区分则取决于注意资源配置。因此, 认知控制在老年人对积极情绪的注意加工中起重要作用。此外, 注意偏向的时间进程也是影响老年人情绪注意中积极效应的关键因素。最后, 综合以往研究构建出认知控制对老年人积极效应发生作用的注意阶段模型。未来研究可从中国老年人情绪注意加工模式、不同认知控制子成分的作用机制、提高研究生态学效度和注意的治疗品质几个方面继续探索。     

Compensatory processing during rule-based category learning in older adults

Healthy older adults typically perform worse than younger adults at rule-based category learning, but better than patients with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. To further investigate aging’s effect on rule-based category learning, we monitored event-related potentials (ERPs) while younger and neuropsychologically typical older adults performed a visual category-learning task with a rule-based category structure and trial-by-trial feedback. Using these procedures, we previously identified ERPs sensitive to categorization strategy and accuracy in young participants. In addition, previous studies have demonstrated the importance of neural processing in the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobe for this task. In this study, older adults showed lower accuracy and longer response times than younger adults, but there were two distinct subgroups of older adults. One subgroup showed near-chance performance throughout the procedure, never categorizing accurately. The other subgroup reached asymptotic accuracy that was equivalent to that in younger adults, although they categorized more slowly. These two subgroups were further distinguished via ERPs. Consistent with the compensation theory of cognitive aging, older adults who successfully learned showed larger frontal ERPs when compared with younger adults. Recruitment of prefrontal resources may have improved performance while slowing response times. Additionally, correlations of feedback-locked P300 amplitudes with category-learning accuracy differentiated successful younger and older adults. Overall, the results suggest that the ability to adapt one’s behavior in response to feedback during learning varies across older individuals, and that the failure of some to adapt their behavior may reflect inadequate engagement of prefrontal cortex.     

Sleep facilitates consolidation of positive emotional memory in healthy older adults

ABSTRACT

Evidence has demonstrated that sleep-related memory consolidation declines in ageing. However, little is known about age-related changes to sleep-related emotional memory consolidation, especially when considering the positivity effect observed in older adults. In the present study, we sought to explore whether there is a positive emotional bias in sleep-related memory consolidation among healthy older adults. Young and older adults were randomly assigned either into a sleep or wake condition. All participants encoded positive, negative, and neutral stimuli and underwent recognition tests immediately (test 1), after a 12-hour sleep/wake interval (test 2), and 3 days after test 2 (test 3). Results showed that age-related differences of sleep beneficial effect were modulated by emotion valence. In particular, sleep selectively enhanced positive memory in older adults, while in young adults sleep beneficial effect was manifested in neutral memory. Moreover, the sleep beneficial effect can be maintained at least 3 days in both young and older adults. These findings suggest that older adults had preserved but positive bias of sleep-related memory consolidation, which could be one of the underlying mechanisms for their generally better emotional well-being in daily life. These findings highlight the dynamic interplay among sleep and emotional memory in older adults.     

Positive explorers: modeling dynamic control in normal aging

Situations in which there are multiple changes occurring all at once and which demand complex decisions to be made are common throughout life, but little is known about how normal aging influences performance on these types of scenarios. To determine performance differences associated with normal aging, we test older and younger adults in a dynamic control task. The task involves the control of a single output variable over time via multiple and uncertain input controls. The Single Limited Input, Dynamic Exploratory Responses (SLIDER) computational model, is implemented to determine the behavioral characteristics associated with normal aging in a dynamic control task. Model-based analysis demonstrates a unique performance signature profile associated with normal aging. Specifically, older adults exhibit a positivity effect in which they are more influenced by positively valenced feedback, congruent with previous research, as well as enhanced exploratory behavior.     

Optimistic biases in observational learning of value

Action-outcome contingencies can be learnt either by active trial-and-error, or vicariously, by observing the outcomes of actions performed by others. The extant literature is ambiguous as to which of these modes of learning is more effective, as controlled comparisons of operant and observational learning are rare. Here, we contrasted human operant and observational value learning, assessing implicit and explicit measures of learning from positive and negative reinforcement. Compared to direct operant learning, we show observational learning is associated with an optimistic over-valuation of low-value options, a pattern apparent both in participants’ choice preferences and their explicit post-hoc estimates of value. Learning of higher value options showed no such bias. We suggest that such a bias can be explained as a tendency for optimistic underestimation of the chance of experiencing negative events, an optimism repressed when information is gathered through direct operant learning.     

List of Reviewers

ABSTRACT

Anxious individuals report disproportionately negative expectations concerning the future, termed the negative expectancy bias. In contrast, ageing is associated with an inflated expectancy for positive future events. A recent study [Steinman, S. A., Smyth, F. L., Bucks, R. S., MacLeod, C., &; Teachman, B. A. (2013). Anxiety-linked expectancy bias across the adult lifespan. Cognition and Emotion, 27, 345–355. doi:10.1080/02699931.2012.711743] found using an interpretation bias task, a negative expectancy bias in young adults and positive expectancy bias in older adults with high trait anxiety. Extending this, the current study examined expectancy bias for positive, negative and ambiguously emotionally toned information in younger and older adults with clinical levels of depression and anxiety to community control groups, thus allowing examination of both disorder status and age on biases. Clinical participants reported a pervasive tendency to expect negative events relative to positive regardless of whether the current scenarios were positive, negative or ambiguous. Older adults showed greater expectancy for future positive scenarios when the initial scenario was negative or ambiguous. Age moderated the negative expectancy bias shown by clinical participants for ambiguous scenarios. Clinical disorders in older adults attenuated the positive expectancy bias that was otherwise strong in community participants. These findings provide further evidence for age differences in processing of emotionally toned information, with older adults showing a greater expectancy for positive future events.     

老年人错误记忆的情绪效价和时间效应

基于信号检测论的框架, 考察不同的情绪效价以及时间间隔如何交互影响老年人在图片再认任务中的辨别力(d′)和判断标准(β), 进而影响其错误记忆。以21名老年人(女性14名)为被试, 平均年龄67.17 ± 5.03岁。根据中国老年人对国际情绪图片库(International Affective Picture System, IAPS)中图片评定的情绪参数, 选出积极、消极和中性图片各60张作为学习材料。另选积极、消极和中性图片各30张作为每次再认测验的干扰材料, 并且两次再认测验的干扰材料不同。短时间隔条件让老年人在图片记忆编码半个小时后完成对图片的再认测验; 长时间隔条件则为在三周后完成对图片的再认测验。结果发现: 1)在短时间隔条件下, β和d′共同影响虚报率; 而在长时间隔条件下, 只有β影响虚报率, d′不影响虚报率; 2)无论是在短时还是长时间隔条件下, 积极图片与消极图片的判别力d′都没有显著差别; 3)在短时间隔条件下, 老年人对消极图片的β更低、虚报率更高; 在长时间隔条件下, 老年人对积极图片的β更低、虚报率更高。研究结果表明: 老年人的错误记忆受判别力d′和判断标准β的影响。情绪效价通过作用于老年人的反应倾向(判断标准β)、而非记忆质量(判别力d′)来影响其错误记忆。时间间隔可以调节情绪效价对老年人判断标准β和错误记忆的作用, 使之随时间发生反转。老年人的“积极效应”在错误记忆中可能表现为随着时间的流逝, 老年人更愿意将积极信息报告为经历或学习过的信息。     

Age-related differences and the role of augmented visual feedback in learning a bimanual coordination pattern

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of aging and the role of augmented visual information in the acquisition of a new bimanual coordination pattern, namely a 90° relative phase pattern. In a pilot study, younger and older adults received augmented visual feedback in the form of a real-time orthogonal display of both limb movements after every fifth trial. Younger adults acquired this task over three days of practice and retained the task well over periods of one week and one month of no practice while the older adults showed no improvement at all on the task. It was hypothesized that the amount of augmented information was not sufficient for the older adults to overcome the strong tendency to perform natural, intrinsically stable coordination patterns, which consequently prevented them from learning the task. The present study evaluated the age-related role of augmented visual feedback for learning the new pattern. Participants were randomly assigned within age groups to receive either concurrent or terminal visual feedback after every trial in acquisition. In contrast to the pilot study, all of the older adults learned the pattern, although not to the same level as the younger adults. Both younger and older adults benefitted from concurrent visual feedback, but the older adults gained more from the concurrent feedback than the younger adults, relative to terminal feedback conditions. The results suggest that when learning bimanual coordination patterns, older adults are more sensitive to the structure of the practice conditions, particularly the availability of concurrent visual information. This greater sensitivity to the learning environment may reflect a diminished capacity for inhibitory control and a decreased ability to focus attention on the salient aspects of learning the task.     

Empathy and feedback processing in active and observational learning

The feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the P300 have been related to the processing of one’s own and other individuals’ feedback during both active and observational learning. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the role of trait-empathic responding with regard to the modulation of the neural correlates of observational learning in particular. Thirty-four healthy participants completed an active and an observational learning task. On both tasks, the participants’ aim was to maximize their monetary gain by choosing from two stimuli the one that showed the higher probability of reward. Participants gained insight into the stimulus–reward contingencies according to monetary feedback presented after they had made an active choice or by observing the choices of a virtual partner. Participants showed a general improvement in learning performance on both learning tasks. P200, FRN, and P300 amplitudes were larger during active, as compared with observational, learning. Furthermore, nonreward elicited a significantly more negative FRN than did reward in the active learning task, while only a trend was observed for observational learning. Distinct subcomponents of trait cognitive empathy were related to poorer performance and smaller P300 amplitudes for observational learning only. Taken together, both the learning performance and event-related potentials during observational learning are affected by different aspects of trait cognitive empathy, and certain types of observational learning may actually be disrupted by a higher tendency to understand and adopt other people’s perspectives.     

Decision-making and feedback sensitivity: A comparison between older and younger adults

This study investigated decision-making and feedback sensitivity in healthy older adults with a new task: the Pictures Decision Task. The study was conducted on 27 older (aged 64–88) and 26 younger adults (aged 25–57) matched for years of education. Results showed that older adults did not show the Jumping to Conclusions bias and that older adults had difficulty learning from feedback only when the context was ambiguous and not when they were given aids or interpretative information that decreased ambiguity. The Pictures Decision Task, with respect to the Iowa Gambling Task and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, allowed us to assess decision-making and feedback sensitivity under highly ambiguous conditions and therefore to add new insight into the reasoning process of older people.