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
Perfectionism: does it help or hinder one's feedback learning performance? The present study investigated the relationship between perfectionism and feedback learning, and if reward sensitivity...Show morePerfectionism: does it help or hinder one's feedback learning performance? The present study investigated the relationship between perfectionism and feedback learning, and if reward sensitivity plays a mediating role in this relationship. We wanted to examine whether adaptive perfectionism (AP) and maladaptive perfectionism (MP) predict differences in feedback learning, tending more towards positive or negative feedback learning. Furthermore, we examined if this relationship might be influenced by one's sensitivity to different types of feedback: reward and punishment. Participants (N = 113) carried out a probabilistic learning task and completed the Almost Perfect Scale Revised and the Sensitivity to Punishment Sensitivity to Reward questionnaires. We found no differences in feedback learning between adaptive and maladaptive participants. Correspondingly, we also did not find mediating roles for reward and punishment sensitivity. However, we did find a strong significant relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and punishment sensitivity. These results remained unchanged when we carried out an exploratory analysis, using only perfectionistic participants. Because existing literature points towards strong correlations between perfectionism, feedback learning, and reward sensitivity, more research is needed to investigate the links between these constructs.Show less