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Adolescents exhibit reduced Pavlovian biases on instrumental learning

Multiple learning systems allow individuals to flexibly respond to opportunities and challenges present in the environment. An evolutionarily conserved “Pavlovian” learning mechanism couples valence and action, promoting a tendency to approach cues associated with reward and to inhibit action in the...

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Autores principales: Raab, Hillary A., Hartley, Catherine A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7519144/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32978451
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-72628-w
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author Raab, Hillary A.
Hartley, Catherine A.
author_facet Raab, Hillary A.
Hartley, Catherine A.
author_sort Raab, Hillary A.
collection PubMed
description Multiple learning systems allow individuals to flexibly respond to opportunities and challenges present in the environment. An evolutionarily conserved “Pavlovian” learning mechanism couples valence and action, promoting a tendency to approach cues associated with reward and to inhibit action in the face of anticipated punishment. Although this default response system may be adaptive, these hard-wired reactions can hinder the ability to learn flexible “instrumental” actions in pursuit of a goal. Such constraints on behavioral flexibility have been studied extensively in adults. However, the extent to which these valence-specific response tendencies bias instrumental learning across development remains poorly characterized. Here, we show that while Pavlovian response biases constrain flexible action learning in children and adults, these biases are attenuated in adolescents. This adolescent-specific reduction in Pavlovian bias may promote unbiased exploration of approach and avoidance responses, facilitating the discovery of rewarding behavior in the many novel contexts that adolescents encounter.
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spelling pubmed-75191442020-09-29 Adolescents exhibit reduced Pavlovian biases on instrumental learning Raab, Hillary A. Hartley, Catherine A. Sci Rep Article Multiple learning systems allow individuals to flexibly respond to opportunities and challenges present in the environment. An evolutionarily conserved “Pavlovian” learning mechanism couples valence and action, promoting a tendency to approach cues associated with reward and to inhibit action in the face of anticipated punishment. Although this default response system may be adaptive, these hard-wired reactions can hinder the ability to learn flexible “instrumental” actions in pursuit of a goal. Such constraints on behavioral flexibility have been studied extensively in adults. However, the extent to which these valence-specific response tendencies bias instrumental learning across development remains poorly characterized. Here, we show that while Pavlovian response biases constrain flexible action learning in children and adults, these biases are attenuated in adolescents. This adolescent-specific reduction in Pavlovian bias may promote unbiased exploration of approach and avoidance responses, facilitating the discovery of rewarding behavior in the many novel contexts that adolescents encounter. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-09-25 /pmc/articles/PMC7519144/ /pubmed/32978451 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-72628-w Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Raab, Hillary A.
Hartley, Catherine A.
Adolescents exhibit reduced Pavlovian biases on instrumental learning
title Adolescents exhibit reduced Pavlovian biases on instrumental learning
title_full Adolescents exhibit reduced Pavlovian biases on instrumental learning
title_fullStr Adolescents exhibit reduced Pavlovian biases on instrumental learning
title_full_unstemmed Adolescents exhibit reduced Pavlovian biases on instrumental learning
title_short Adolescents exhibit reduced Pavlovian biases on instrumental learning
title_sort adolescents exhibit reduced pavlovian biases on instrumental learning
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7519144/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32978451
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-72628-w
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