Individuals who have a history of early life adversity in their childhood often show impairments in a broad range of cognitive functioning and behavioral adaptation. This deficit could potentially...Show moreIndividuals who have a history of early life adversity in their childhood often show impairments in a broad range of cognitive functioning and behavioral adaptation. This deficit could potentially be due to the impairment in associative learning. To explore this possibility, this paper examined whether early life adversity affects people’s punishment sensitivity, an essential part of associative learning, using a healthy sample. In total, 188 participants completed a volatile probabilistic learning task online that required them to learn from the feedback, update the association as well as adjust their behaviors in different social conditions (social vs. non-social) and block types (stable vs. volatile). This paper that early life adversity is related to a more total game loss, but not related to the percentages of choosing the stimulus with a lower probability of loss. Participants show a positive bias in general while addressing the effect of early life adversity. Furthermore, this paper found that participants with higher early life adversity may show reduced punishment sensitivity, but only when they think they are interacting and learning about other people. No such interaction association was observed between early life adversity, feedback shown, and block types. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that early life adversity might influence people’s punishment sensitivity in the social context. It provides insight for further research regarding basic learning mechanisms.Show less
