Effects of Early Adversity and War Trauma on Learning Under Uncertainty.

ABSTRACT: In uncertain situations, individuals rely on prior experiences of successes and failures to guide future decisions. Research has shown that children exposed to early adversity, such as abuse, can exhibit atypical behaviours in probabilistic learning tasks compared to peers without such experiences, which may have long-term behavioural consequences. Building on these findings, our study investigates whether children exposed to war-related trauma and forced displacement show similar alterations in decision-making under uncertainty. We conducted a series of experiments involving tasks that required learning and decision-making under uncertainty (e.g., multi-armed bandits and foraging) in Amman, Jordan, comparing Syrian refugee children (ages 7-12) with age-matched Jordanian non-refugee peers.

SUBMITTER: Lisi M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12332969 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature