Novelty and uncertainty differentially drive exploration across development.

Across the lifespan, individuals frequently choose between exploiting known rewarding options or exploring unknown alternatives. A large body of work has suggested that children may explore more than adults. However, because novelty and reward uncertainty are often correlated, it is unclear how they differentially influence decision-making across development. Here, children, adolescents, and adults (ages 8-27 years, N = 122) completed an adapted version of a recently developed value-guided decision-making task that decouples novelty and uncertainty. In line with prior studies, we found that exploration decreased with increasing age. Critically, participants of all ages demonstrated a similar bias to select choice options with greater novelty, whereas aversion to reward uncertainty increased into adulthood. Computational modeling of participant choices revealed that whereas adolescents and adults demonstrated attenuated uncertainty aversion for more novel choice options, children's choices were not influenced by reward uncertainty.

Reward-motivated memories influence new learning across development.

Previously rewarding experiences can influence choices in new situations. Past work has demonstrated that existing reward associations can either help or hinder future behaviors and that there is substantial individual variability in the transfer of value across contexts. Developmental changes in reward sensitivity may also modulate the impact of prior reward associations on later goal-directed behavior. The current study aimed to characterize how reward associations formed in the past affected learning in the present from childhood to adulthood. Participants completed a reinforcement learning paradigm using high- and low-reward stimuli from a task completed 24 h earlier, as well as novel stimuli, as choice options. We found that prior high-reward associations impeded learning across all ages. We then assessed how individual differences in the prioritization of high- versus low-reward associations in memory impacted new learning. Greater high-reward memory prioritization was associated with worse learning performance for previously high-reward relative to low-reward stimuli across age. Adolescents also showed impeded early learning regardless of individual differences in high-reward memory prioritization. Detrimental effects of previous reward on choice behavior did not persist beyond learning. These findings indicate that prior reward associations proactively interfere with future learning from childhood to adulthood and that individual differences in reward-related memory prioritization influence new learning across age.

"Guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning and endogenous cuing": Retraction.

Reports the retraction of "Guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning and endogenous cuing" by Yuhong V. Jiang, Khena M. Swallow and Gail M. Rosenbaum (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2013[Feb], Vol 39[1], 285-297). The retraction is at the request of the authors. There was an unintentional error in the MATLAB experimental script used for Experiment 5 that caused one experimental condition to be incorrectly recorded in the data files. The authors confirmed that the MATLAB scripts used for Experiments 1 and 2 did not contain any errors and the findings and conclusions remain valid. However, for Experiments 3 and 4, the programming error led to two issues: (a) one variable was incorrectly written to the data files, and (b) the actual number of trials per condition during the training phase was unbalanced. To ensure that the scientific record is adequately corrected, the authors have uploaded additional information, including the MATLAB scripts for all experiments, the reanalysis of the data from Experiments 3, 4, and 5, and the validation of Experiments 1 and 2, to this OSF repository: https://osf.io/k79j4/?view_only=2220d62d0bb643f9b4ca53 e7a6da872f. The first author of the paper, who programmed the MATLAB scripts, takes full responsibility for the error. The authors sincerely regret this error and apologize for its effects on the editors, reviewers, and the broader scientific community. All authors of the original article joined in the request for the retraction. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2012-09470-001). Our visual system is highly sensitive to regularities in the environment. Locations that were important in one's previous experience are often prioritized during search, even though observers may not be aware of the learning. In this study we characterized the guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning of a target's spatial probability, and examined the interaction between endogenous cuing and probability cuing. Participants searched for a target (T) among distractors (Ls). The target was more often located in one region of the screen than in others. We found that search reaction time (RT) was faster when the target appeared in the high-frequency region rather than the low-frequency regions. This difference increased when there were more items on the display, suggesting that probability cuing guides spatial attention. Additional data indicated that on their own, probability cuing and endogenous cuing (e.g., a central arrow that predicted a target's location) were similarly effective at guiding attention. However, when both cues were presented at once, probability cuing was largely eliminated. Thus, although both incidental learning and endogenous cuing can effectively guide attention, endogenous cuing takes precedence over incidental learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Valence biases in reinforcement learning shift across adolescence and modulate subsequent memory.

As individuals learn through trial and error, some are more influenced by good outcomes, while others weight bad outcomes more heavily. Such valence biases may also influence memory for past experiences. Here, we examined whether valence asymmetries in reinforcement learning change across adolescence, and whether individual learning asymmetries bias the content of subsequent memory. Participants ages 8-27 learned the values of 'point machines,' after which their memory for trial-unique images presented with choice outcomes was assessed. Relative to children and adults, adolescents overweighted worse-than-expected outcomes during learning. Individuals' valence biases modulated incidental memory, such that those who prioritized worse- (or better-) than-expected outcomes during learning were also more likely to remember images paired with these outcomes, an effect reproduced in an independent dataset. Collectively, these results highlight age-related changes in the computation of subjective value and demonstrate that a valence-asymmetric valuation process influences how information is prioritized in episodic memory.

Do adolescents always take more risks than adults? A within-subjects developmental study of context effects on decision making and processing.

Adolescents take more risks than adults in the real world, but laboratory experiments do not consistently demonstrate this pattern. In the current study, we examine the possibility that age differences in decision making vary as a function of the nature of the task (e.g., how information about risk is learned) and contextual features of choices (e.g., the relative favorability of choice outcomes), due to age differences in psychological constructs and physiological processes related to choice (e.g., weighting of rare probabilities, sensitivity to expected value, sampling, pupil dilation). Adolescents and adults made the same 24 choices between risky and safe options twice: once based on descriptions of each option, and once based on experience gained from sampling the options repeatedly. We systematically varied contextual features of options, facilitating a fine-grained analysis of age differences in response to these features. Eye-tracking and experience-sampling measures allowed tests of age differences in predecisional processes. Results in adolescent and adult participants were similar in several respects, including mean risk-taking rates and eye-gaze patterns. However, adolescents' and adults' choice behavior and process measures varied as a function of decision context. Surprisingly, age differences were most pronounced in description, with only marginal differences in experience. Results suggest that probability weighting, expected-value sensitivity, experience sampling and pupil dilation patterns may change with age. Overall, results are consistent with the notion that adolescents are more prone than adults to take risks when faced with unlikely but costly negative outcomes, and broadly point to complex interactions between multiple psychological constructs that develop across adolescence.

The interactive effects of peers and alcohol on functional brain connectivity in young adults.

Alcohol and peer influence are known to have independent effects on risky decision making. We investigated combined influences of peers and alcohol on functional brain connectivity and behavior. Young adults underwent fMRI while completing response inhibition (Go/No-Go) and risky driving (Stoplight) tasks. Intoxicated participants made more mistakes on Go/No-Go, and showed diminished connectivity between the anterior insular cortex (AIC) and regions implicated in executive function (e.g., dorsal anterior cingulate). During the Stoplight game, peer observation was associated with increased connectivity between the AIC and regions implicated in social cognition (e.g., ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Alcohol and peers also exerted interactive influences, such that some connectivity changes only occurred when participants were observed by peers and under the influence of alcohol. These findings suggest that brain systems underlying decision making function differently under the combined influence of alcohol and peers, and highlight mechanisms through which this combination of factors is particularly risky for youth.

Developmental perspectives on risky and impulsive choice.

Epidemiological data suggest that risk taking in the real world increases from childhood into adolescence and declines into adulthood. However, developmental patterns of behaviour in laboratory assays of risk taking and impulsive choice are inconsistent. In this article, we review a growing literature using behavioural economic approaches to understand developmental changes in risk taking and impulsivity. We present findings that have begun to elucidate both the cognitive and neural processes that contribute to risky and impulsive choice, as well as how age-related changes in these neurocognitive processes give rise to shifts in choice behaviour. We highlight how variability in task parameters can be used to identify specific aspects of decision contexts that may differentially influence risky and impulsive choice behaviour across development. This article is part of the theme issue 'Risk taking and impulsive behaviour: fundamental discoveries, theoretical perspectives and clinical implications'.

The Influences of Described and Experienced Information on Adolescent Risky Decision Making.

Adolescents are known to take more risks than adults, which can be harmful to their health and well-being. However, despite age differences in real-world risk taking, laboratory risk-taking paradigms often do not evince these developmental patterns. Recent findings in the literature suggest that this inconsistency may be due in part to differences between how adolescents process information about risk when it is described (e.g., in a description-based classroom intervention) versus when it is experienced (e.g., when a teenager experiences the outcome of a risky choice). The present review considers areas of research that can inform approaches to intervention by deepening our understanding of risk taking in described or experienced contexts. We examine the literature on the description-experience gap, which has generally been limited to studies of adult samples, but which highlights differential decision making when risk information is described versus experienced. Informed by this work, we then explore the developmental literature comparing adolescent to adult decision making, and consider whether inconsistencies in age-related findings might be explained by distinguishing between studies in which participants learn about decision outcomes through experience versus description. In light of evidence that studies using experience-based tasks more often show age differences in risk taking, we consider the implications of this pattern, and argue that experience-based tasks may be more ecologically valid measures of adolescent risky decision making, in part due to the heightened affective nature of these tasks. Finally, we propose a model to integrate our findings with theories of adolescent risk-taking, and discuss implications for risk-reduction messaging.

Peers influence adolescent reward processing, but not response inhibition.

Most adolescent risk taking occurs in the presence of peers. Prior research suggests that peers alter adolescents' decision making by increasing reward sensitivity and the engagement of regions involved in the processing of rewards, primarily the striatum. However, the potential influence of peers on the capacity for impulse control, and the associated recruitment of the brain's control circuitry, has not yet been adequately examined. In the current study, adolescents underwent functional neuroimaging while they completed interleaved rounds of risk-taking and response-inhibition tasks. Social context was manipulated such that the participants believed they were either playing alone and unobserved, or watched by an anonymous peer. Compared to those who completed the tasks alone, adolescents in the peer condition took more risks during the risk-taking task and exhibited relatively heightened activation of the striatum. Activity within this striatal region also predicted individual differences in overall risk taking. In contrast, the presence of peers had no effect on behavioral response inhibition and had minimal impact on the engagement of typical cognitive control regions. In a subregion of the anterior insula engaged mutually by both tasks, activity was again found to be sensitive to social context during the risk-taking task, but not during the response-inhibition task. These findings extend the evidence that the presence of peers biases adolescents towards risk taking by increasing reward sensitivity rather than disrupting cognitive control.

Working Memory Training in Adolescents Decreases Laboratory Risk Taking in the Presence of Peers.

Adolescence is a period of heightened risk-taking relative to both adulthood and childhood, due in part to peers' increased influence on adolescent decision making. Because adolescents' choices have harmful consequences, there is great interest in specific interventions that might attenuate risk taking. We hypothesized that it might be possible to reduce adolescent risk taking through an intervention targeting the ability/tendency to engage cognitive control processes. While some studies of Working Memory Training (WMT) have indicated subsequent enhancement of adults' cognitive control abilities, potential impacts on adolescent cognitive control have not been explored. Accordingly, we tested whether four weeks of WMT (relative to Active Control Training, ACT) might increase performance on cognitive control measures and decrease risk-taking in adolescents. Adolescents receiving WMT, compared to those receiving ACT, exhibited some evidence of improved short-term memory performance following the 4-week training period. Improvements did not significantly transfer to performance on basic cognitive control measures. However, on two risk-taking tasks administered at post-training either with or without an anonymous peer audience, adolescents who received WMT evinced suppressed levels of risk taking when observed by peers, an effect not seen in ACT. Further work is needed to more fully characterize the potential of WMT interventions in stemming risk behavior within adolescent samples.

Adolescent risk-taking is predicted by individual differences in cognitive control over emotional, but not non-emotional, response conflict.

While much research on adolescent risk behaviour has focused on the development of prefrontal self-regulatory mechanisms, prior studies have elicited mixed evidence of a relationship between individual differences in the capacity for self-regulation and individual differences in risk taking. To explain these inconsistent findings, it has been suggested that the capacity for self-regulation may be, for most adolescents, adequately mature to produce adaptive behaviour in non-affective, "cold" circumstances, but that adolescents have a more difficult time exerting control in affective, "hot" contexts. To further explore this claim, the present study examined individual differences in self-control in the face of affective and non-affective response conflict, and examined whether differences in the functioning of cognitive control processes under these different conditions was related to risk taking. Participants completed a cognitive Stroop task, an emotional Stroop task, and a risky driving task known as the Stoplight game. Regression analyses showed that performance on the emotional Stroop task predicted laboratory risk-taking in the driving task, whereas performance on the cognitive Stroop task did not exhibit the same trend. This pattern of results is consistent with theories of adolescent risk-taking that emphasise the impacts of affective contextual influences on the ability to enact effective cognitive control.

Variation in strategy use across measures of verbal working memory.

The working memory (WM) literature contains a number of tasks that vary on dimensions such as when or how memory items are reported. In addition to the ways in which WM tasks are designed to differ, tasks may also diverge according to the strategies participants use during task performance. The present study included seven tasks from the WM literature, each requiring short-term retention of verbal items. Following completion of a small number of trials from each task, individuals completed a self-report questionnaire to identify their primary strategy. Results indicated substantial variation across individuals for a given task, and within the same individual across tasks. Moreover, while direct comparisons between tasks showed that some tasks evinced similar patterns of strategy use despite differing task demands, others showed markedly different patterns of self-reported strategy use. A community detection algorithm, aimed at identifying groups of individuals based on their profile of strategic choices, revealed unique communities of individuals who are dependent on specific strategies under varying demands. Together, the findings suggest that researchers using common WM paradigms should very carefully consider the implications of variation in strategy use when interpreting their findings.

Task specificity of attention training: the case of probability cuing.

Statistical regularities in our environment enhance perception and modulate the allocation of spatial attention. Surprisingly little is known about how learning-induced changes in spatial attention transfer across tasks. In this study, we investigated whether a spatial attentional bias learned in one task transfers to another. Most of the experiments began with a training phase in which a search target was more likely to be located in one quadrant of the screen than in the other quadrants. An attentional bias toward the high-probability quadrant developed during training (probability cuing). In a subsequent, testing phase, the target's location distribution became random. In addition, the training and testing phases were based on different tasks. Probability cuing did not transfer between visual search and a foraging-like task. However, it did transfer between various types of visual search tasks that differed in stimuli and difficulty. These data suggest that different visual search tasks share a common and transferrable learned attentional bias. However, this bias is not shared by high-level, decision-making tasks such as foraging.

Interaction between scene-based and array-based contextual cueing.

Contextual cueing refers to the cueing of spatial attention by repeated spatial context. Previous studies have demonstrated distinctive properties of contextual cueing by background scenes and by an array of search items. Whereas scene-based contextual cueing reflects explicit learning of the scene-target association, array-based contextual cueing is supported primarily by implicit learning. In this study, we investigated the interaction between scene-based and array-based contextual cueing. Participants searched for a target that was predicted by both the background scene and the locations of distractor items. We tested three possible patterns of interaction: (1) The scene and the array could be learned independently, in which case cueing should be expressed even when only one cue was preserved; (2) the scene and array could be learned jointly, in which case cueing should occur only when both cues were preserved; (3) overshadowing might occur, in which case learning of the stronger cue should preclude learning of the weaker cue. In several experiments, we manipulated the nature of the contextual cues present during training and testing. We also tested explicit awareness of scenes, scene-target associations, and arrays. The results supported the overshadowing account: Specifically, scene-based contextual cueing precluded array-based contextual cueing when both were predictive of the location of a search target. We suggest that explicit, endogenous cues dominate over implicit cues in guiding spatial attention.

Guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning and endogenous cuing.

Our visual system is highly sensitive to regularities in the environment. Locations that were important in one's previous experience are often prioritized during search, even though observers may not be aware of the learning. In this study we characterized the guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning of a target's spatial probability, and examined the interaction between endogenous cuing and probability cuing. Participants searched for a target (T) among distractors (Ls). The target was more often located in one region of the screen than in others. We found that search reaction time (RT) was faster when the target appeared in the high-frequency region rather than the low-frequency regions. This difference increased when there were more items on the display, suggesting that probability cuing guides spatial attention. Additional data indicated that on their own, probability cuing and endogenous cuing (e.g., a central arrow that predicted a target's location) were similarly effective at guiding attention. However, when both cues were presented at once, probability cuing was largely eliminated. Thus, although both incidental learning and endogenous cuing can effectively guide attention, endogenous cuing takes precedence over incidental learning.

Rapid acquisition but slow extinction of an attentional bias in space.

Substantial research has focused on the allocation of spatial attention based on goals or perceptual salience. In everyday life, however, people also direct attention using their previous experience. Here we investigate the pace at which people incidentally learn to prioritize specific locations. Participants searched for a T among Ls in a visual search task. Unbeknownst to them, the target was more often located in one region of the screen than in other regions. An attentional bias toward the rich region developed over dozens of trials. However, the bias did not rapidly readjust to new contexts. It persisted for at least a week and for hundreds of trials after the target's position became evenly distributed. The persistence of the bias did not reflect a long window over which visual statistics were calculated. Long-term persistence differentiates incidentally learned attentional biases from the more flexible goal-driven attention.