Social reinforcement learning as a predictor of real-life experiences in individuals with high and low depressive symptomatology

Abstract

Background Several studies have reported diminished learning from non-social outcomes in depressed individuals. However, it is not clear how depression impacts learning from social feedback. Notably, mood disorders are commonly associated with deficits in social functioning, which raises the possibility that potential impairments in social learning may negatively affect real-life social experiences in depressed subjects. Methods Ninety-two participants with high (HD; N = 40) and low (LD; N = 52) depression scores were recruited. Subjects performed a learning task, during which they received monetary outcomes or social feedback which they were told came from other people. Additionally, participants answered questions about their everyday social experiences. Computational models were fit to the data and model parameters were related to social experience measures. Results HD subjects reported a reduced quality and quantity of social experiences compared to LD controls, including an increase in the amount of time spent in negative social situations. Moreover, HD participants showed lower learning rates than LD subjects in the social condition of the task. Interestingly, across all participants, reduced social learning rates predicted higher amounts of time spent in negative social situations, even when depression scores were controlled for. Conclusion These findings indicate that deficits in social learning may affect the quality of everyday social experiences. Specifically, the impaired ability to use social feedback to appropriately update future actions, which was observed in HD subjects, may lead to suboptimal interpersonal behavior in real life. This, in turn, may evoke negative feedback from others, thus bringing about more unpleasant social encounters.

Impaired Social Learning Predicts Reduced Real-life Motivation in Individuals with Depression: A Computational fMRI Study

“…This idea is supported by the supplementary analysis of the present study which shows that the interaction between enhanced task uncertainty and inhibitory uncertainty intolerance predicts reduced social engagement motivation. In addition, the above suggestion is in line with our previous findings showing that increased negative social feedback expectancies are associated with social disengagement in individuals with high depressive symptomatology (Frey et al, 2019).…”

“…Deficits in social functioning are commonly observed in major depressive disorder (MDD; Katz, Conway, Hammen, Brennan, & Najman, 2011;Rhebergen et al, 2010;Rottenberg & Gotlib, 2008). Compared to controls, depressed individuals have fewer friends (Brim et al, 1982;Frey et al, 2019;Youngren and Lewinsohn, 1980), fewer intimate relationships (Gotlib and Lee, 1989), and spend less time with people in their social circle (Youngren and Lewinsohn, 1980). Additionally, depressed subjects show inappropriate behaviour during social interactions (reviewed in Rottenberg & Gotlib, 2008;Segrin, 2000), which can result in the receipt of negative feedback from other people (Segrin and Abramson, 1994).…”

Factors Predicting the Physical Activity Behavior based on Theory of Reasoned Action among Chronic Low Back Pain of the Patients Referring to Comprehensive Health Service Centers in the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran

“…Sweeney in their study showed that normative beliefs are predictors of persistence of physical activity (Sweeney, Wilson, & Van Horn, 2017). Thus, studies have shown that positive social life is a good predictor of PA (Frey, Frank, & McCabe, 2019).…”

Factors Predicting the Physical Activity Behavior based on Theory of Reasoned Action among Chronic Low Back Pain of the Patients Referring to Comprehensive Health Service Centers in the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran.

“…Sweeney in their study showed that normative beliefs are predictors of persistence of physical activity (Sweeney, Wilson, & Van Horn, 2017). Thus, studies have shown that positive social life is a good predictor of PA (Frey, Frank, & McCabe, 2019).…”