Sharp, Paul B;
Russek, Evan M;
Huys, Quentin JM;
Dolan, Raymond J;
Eldar, Eran;
(2022)
Humans perseverate on punishment avoidance goals in multigoal reinforcement learning.
eLife
, 11
10.7554/eLife.74402.
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Abstract
Managing multiple goals is essential to adaptation, yet we are only beginning to understand computations by which we navigate the resource-demands entailed in so doing. Here, we sought to elucidate how humans balance reward seeking and punishment avoidance goals, and relate this to variation in its expression within anxious individuals. To do so, we developed a novel multigoal pursuit task that includes trial-specific instructed goals to either pursue reward (without risk of punishment) or avoid punishment (without the opportunity for reward). We constructed a computational model of multigoal pursuit to quantify the degree to which participants could disengage from the pursuit goals when instructed to, as well as devote less model-based resources towards goals that were less abundant. In general, participants (n=192) were less flexible in avoiding punishment than in pursuing reward. Thus, when instructed to pursue reward, participants often persisted in avoiding features that had previously been associated with punishment, even though at decision time these features were unambiguously benign. In a similar vein, participants showed no significant downregulation of avoidance when punishment avoidance goals were less abundant in the task. Importantly, we show preliminary evidence that individuals with chronic worry may have difficulty disengaging from punishment avoidance when instructed to seek reward. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that people avoid punishment less flexibly than they pursue reward. Future studies should test in larger samples whether a difficulty to disengage from punishment avoidance contributes to chronic worry.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Humans perseverate on punishment avoidance goals in multigoal reinforcement learning |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.7554/eLife.74402 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74402 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022, Sharp et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | human, neuroscience |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10144902 |
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