TY - JOUR
T1 - Experiential reward learning outweighs instruction prior to adulthood
AU - Decker, Johannes H.
AU - Lourenco, Frederico S.
AU - Doll, Bradley B.
AU - Hartley, Catherine A.
N1 - Funding Information:
C.A.H. developed the study concept, and all authors contributed to the study design. J.H.D. and F.S.L. collected the data. J.H.D., F.S.L., B.B.D., and C.A.H. performed the data analyses and interpretation. J.H.D., F.S.L., and C.A.H. drafted the manuscript, and B.B.D. provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission. This work was supported in part by NIH Grant Nos. P50 MH079513 and T32GM007739, the Dewitt Wallace Readers Digest Fund, and a generous gift from the Mortimer D. Sackler MD family. We thank B. J. Casey and Andrew Drysdale for helpful discussions. We also thank the dedicated participants and families for volunteering their time, and Anthony P. Scalmato for the original artwork from which the task images were adapted.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Psychonomic Society, Inc.
PY - 2015/6/22
Y1 - 2015/6/22
N2 - Throughout our lives, we face the important task of distinguishing rewarding actions from those that are best avoided. Importantly, there are multiple means by which we acquire this information. Through trial and error, we use experiential feedback to evaluate our actions. We also learn which actions are advantageous through explicit instruction from others. Here, we examined whether the influence of these two forms of learning on choice changes across development by placing instruction and experience in competition in a probabilistic-learning task. Whereas inaccurate instruction markedly biased adults’ estimations of a stimulus’s value, children and adolescents were better able to objectively estimate stimulus values through experience. Instructional control of learning is thought to recruit prefrontal–striatal brain circuitry, which continues to mature into adulthood. Our behavioral data suggest that this protracted neurocognitive maturation may cause the motivated actions of children and adolescents to be less influenced by explicit instruction than are those of adults. This absence of a confirmation bias in children and adolescents represents a paradoxical developmental advantage of youth over adults in the unbiased evaluation of actions through positive and negative experience.
AB - Throughout our lives, we face the important task of distinguishing rewarding actions from those that are best avoided. Importantly, there are multiple means by which we acquire this information. Through trial and error, we use experiential feedback to evaluate our actions. We also learn which actions are advantageous through explicit instruction from others. Here, we examined whether the influence of these two forms of learning on choice changes across development by placing instruction and experience in competition in a probabilistic-learning task. Whereas inaccurate instruction markedly biased adults’ estimations of a stimulus’s value, children and adolescents were better able to objectively estimate stimulus values through experience. Instructional control of learning is thought to recruit prefrontal–striatal brain circuitry, which continues to mature into adulthood. Our behavioral data suggest that this protracted neurocognitive maturation may cause the motivated actions of children and adolescents to be less influenced by explicit instruction than are those of adults. This absence of a confirmation bias in children and adolescents represents a paradoxical developmental advantage of youth over adults in the unbiased evaluation of actions through positive and negative experience.
KW - Cognitive control
KW - Decision-making
KW - Development
KW - Reinforcement learning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84939969840&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84939969840&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3758/s13415-014-0332-5
DO - 10.3758/s13415-014-0332-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 25582607
AN - SCOPUS:84939969840
SN - 1530-7026
VL - 15
SP - 310
EP - 320
JO - Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience
JF - Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience
IS - 2
M1 - 5
ER -