Social stress reactivity alters reward and punishment learning.

ABSTRACT: To examine how stress affects cognitive functioning, individual differences in trait vulnerability (punishment sensitivity) and state reactivity (negative affect) to social evaluative threat were examined during concurrent reinforcement learning. Lower trait-level punishment sensitivity predicted better reward learning and poorer punishment learning; the opposite pattern was found in more punishment sensitive individuals. Increasing state-level negative affect was directly related to punishment learning accuracy in highly punishment sensitive individuals, but these measures were inversely related in less sensitive individuals. Combined electrophysiological measurement, performance accuracy and computational estimations of learning parameters suggest that trait and state vulnerability to st

SUBMITTER: Cavanagh JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3110431 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature