Examining social reinforcement learning in social anxiety.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry
; 80: 101810, 2023 09.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37247976
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Reinforcement learning biases have been empirically linked to anhedonia in depression and theoretically linked to social anhedonia in social anxiety disorder, but little work has directly assessed how socially anxious individuals learn from social reward and punishment. METHODS: N = 157 individuals high and low in social anxiety symptoms completed a social probabilistic selection task that involved selecting between pairs of neutral faces with varying probabilities of changing to a happy or angry face. Computational modeling was performed to estimate learning rates. Accuracy in choosing the more rewarding face was also analyzed. RESULTS: No significant group differences were found for learning rates. Contrary to hypotheses, participants high in social anxiety showed impaired punishment learning accuracy; they were more accurate at choosing the most rewarding face than they were at avoiding the most punishing face, and their punishment learning accuracy was lower than that of participants low in social anxiety. Secondary analyses found that high (vs. low) social anxiety participants were less accurate at selecting the more rewarding face on more (vs. less) punishing face pairs. LIMITATIONS: Stimuli were static, White, facial images, which lack important social cues (e.g., movement, sound) and diversity, and participants were largely non-Hispanic, White undergraduates, whose social reinforcement learning may differ from individuals at different developmental stages and those holding more marginalized identities. CONCLUSIONS: Socially anxious individuals may be less accurate at learning to avoid social punishment, which may maintain negative beliefs through an interpersonal stress generation process.
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Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Refuerzo en Psicología
/
Refuerzo Social
Límite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry
Año:
2023
Tipo del documento:
Article
Pais de publicación:
Países Bajos