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Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations
Performance during instrumental learning is commonly believed to reflect the knowledge that has been acquired up to that point. However, recent work in rodents found that instrumental performance was enhanced during periods when reinforcement was withheld, relative to periods when reinforcement was...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9767373/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36480546 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010201 |
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author | Kurtenbach, Hannah Ort, Eduard Froböse, Monja Isabel Jocham, Gerhard |
author_facet | Kurtenbach, Hannah Ort, Eduard Froböse, Monja Isabel Jocham, Gerhard |
author_sort | Kurtenbach, Hannah |
collection | PubMed |
description | Performance during instrumental learning is commonly believed to reflect the knowledge that has been acquired up to that point. However, recent work in rodents found that instrumental performance was enhanced during periods when reinforcement was withheld, relative to periods when reinforcement was provided. This suggests that reinforcement may mask acquired knowledge and lead to impaired performance. In the present study, we investigated whether such a beneficial effect of removing reinforcement translates to humans. Specifically, we tested whether performance during learning was improved during non-reinforced relative to reinforced task periods using signal detection theory and a computational modelling approach. To this end, 60 healthy volunteers performed a novel visual go/no-go learning task with deterministic reinforcement. To probe acquired knowledge in the absence of reinforcement, we interspersed blocks without feedback. In these non-reinforced task blocks, we found an increased d’, indicative of enhanced instrumental performance. However, computational modelling showed that this improvement in performance was not due to an increased sensitivity of decision making to learnt values, but to a more cautious mode of responding, as evidenced by a reduction of a general response bias. Together with an initial tendency to act, this is sufficient to drive differential changes in hit and false alarm rates that jointly lead to an increased d’. To conclude, the improved instrumental performance in the absence of reinforcement observed in studies using asymmetrically reinforced go/no-go tasks may reflect a change in response bias rather than unmasking latent knowledge. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9767373 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-97673732022-12-21 Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations Kurtenbach, Hannah Ort, Eduard Froböse, Monja Isabel Jocham, Gerhard PLoS Comput Biol Research Article Performance during instrumental learning is commonly believed to reflect the knowledge that has been acquired up to that point. However, recent work in rodents found that instrumental performance was enhanced during periods when reinforcement was withheld, relative to periods when reinforcement was provided. This suggests that reinforcement may mask acquired knowledge and lead to impaired performance. In the present study, we investigated whether such a beneficial effect of removing reinforcement translates to humans. Specifically, we tested whether performance during learning was improved during non-reinforced relative to reinforced task periods using signal detection theory and a computational modelling approach. To this end, 60 healthy volunteers performed a novel visual go/no-go learning task with deterministic reinforcement. To probe acquired knowledge in the absence of reinforcement, we interspersed blocks without feedback. In these non-reinforced task blocks, we found an increased d’, indicative of enhanced instrumental performance. However, computational modelling showed that this improvement in performance was not due to an increased sensitivity of decision making to learnt values, but to a more cautious mode of responding, as evidenced by a reduction of a general response bias. Together with an initial tendency to act, this is sufficient to drive differential changes in hit and false alarm rates that jointly lead to an increased d’. To conclude, the improved instrumental performance in the absence of reinforcement observed in studies using asymmetrically reinforced go/no-go tasks may reflect a change in response bias rather than unmasking latent knowledge. Public Library of Science 2022-12-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9767373/ /pubmed/36480546 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010201 Text en © 2022 Kurtenbach et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Kurtenbach, Hannah Ort, Eduard Froböse, Monja Isabel Jocham, Gerhard Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations |
title | Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations |
title_full | Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations |
title_fullStr | Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations |
title_full_unstemmed | Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations |
title_short | Removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations |
title_sort | removal of reinforcement improves instrumental performance in humans by decreasing a general action bias rather than unmasking learnt associations |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9767373/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36480546 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010201 |
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