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
Previous research has emphasized the trade-off between cognitive stability and flexibility. Our main research aim within the present study was to assess whether demand on cognitive flexibility can...Show morePrevious research has emphasized the trade-off between cognitive stability and flexibility. Our main research aim within the present study was to assess whether demand on cognitive flexibility can become associated with specific stimulus contexts (i.e., locations), whether these learned associations are being transferred to a subsequent phase, and whether such associations correlate with need for cognition. In 107 participants we assessed switch costs both in terms of reaction times and error rates in a learning phase where task switch frequencies were manipulated across two contexts (25%/75%) and a subsequent diagnostic phase where task switch frequencies were balanced. We further included individual differences in need for cognition in the analyses, which we measured using the NCS-6 questionnaire. As expected, we found a reduction in switch costs in the high task switch frequency context in the learning phase. We did not observe the expected transfer of effects to the diagnostic phase, but instead an unexpected increase in switch costs in the previous high task switch frequency context. Moreover, there were no modulations of effects by need for cognition. However, there were increases in switch costs during the diagnostic phase for participants who showed a response to the manipulation during the learning phase. Altogether, our results suggests that context indeed plays a role in our ability to adjust to demand on cognitive flexibility. Facilitating associations between these two can modulate task switching performance in terms of speed and accuracy.Show less