Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust

FeldmanHall, Oriel; Dunsmoor, Joseph E.; Tompary, Alexa; Hunter, Lindsay E; Todorov, Alexander; Phelps, Elizabeth A.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1715227115

Cited by 91 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…During the test, the intensity of the light was gradually modified, and the animals’ rewarded response gradually increased with the similarity between the test light and the learning light. In a more recent study in humans (FeldmanHall et al, ), a similar generalization gradient of appetitive responses was found. Thus, participants preferred to play (prosocial behavior) with individuals who resembled an individual previously experienced as trustworthy.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 65%

Generalization of appetitive conditioned responses

Andreatta

Pauli

2019

Psychophysiology

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A stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) associated with an appetitive unconditioned stimulus (US) acquires positive properties and elicits appetitive conditioned responses (CR). Such associative learning has been examined extensively in animals with food as the US, and results are used to explain psychopathologies (e.g., substance‐related disorders or obesity). Human studies on appetitive conditioning exist, too, but we still know little about generalization processes. Understanding these processes may explain why stimuli not associated with a drug, for instance, can elicit craving. Forty‐seven hungry participants underwent an appetitive conditioning protocol during which one of two circles with different diameters (CS+) became associated with an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel, according to participants’ preference) but never the other circle (CS−). During generalization, US were delivered twice and the two CS were presented again plus four circles (generalization stimuli, GS) with gradually increasing diameters from CS− to CS+. We found successful appetitive conditioning as reflected in appetitive subjective ratings (positive valence, higher contingency) and physiological responses (startle attenuation and larger skin conductance responses) to CS+ versus CS−, and, importantly, both measures confirmed generalization as indicated by generalization gradients. Small changes in CS‐US contingency during generalization may have weakened generalization processes on the physiological level. Considering that appetitive conditioned responses can be generalized to non‐US‐associated stimuli, a next important step would be to investigate risk factors that mediate overgeneralization.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 65%

Generalization of appetitive conditioned responses

Andreatta

Pauli

2019

Psychophysiology

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“…People are able to form trustworthiness judgments quickly from someone's appearance with high reliability across individuals (Engell et al, 2007;Todorov et al, 2013;FeldmanHall et al, 2018). In the present study, despite variability in perceptions of neighborhood disorder, there was no difference in the ability to label a face as trustworthy or untrustworthy compared to the original ratings based on the Todorov and colleagues computer-generated faces (Oosterhof and Todorov, 2008).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 52%

Living in a Disadvantaged Neighborhood Affects Neural Processing of Facial Trustworthiness

Chang

Baskin‐Sommers

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Neighborhood disorder (i.e., physical or social decay) is associated with decreased trust, which reinforces criminal behavior among some individuals in these communities. However, past research largely is descriptive and has not measured processes underlying trust. Using behavioral and neural indices [the late positive potential (LPP), a marker of salience elaboration] in a sample of adults (N = 55), we examined the association between perceived neighborhood disorder and facial trustworthiness perception as well as the potential moderating role of trustworthiness perception on the association between PND and criminal behavior. Individuals with higher perceived neighborhood disorder displayed less LPP differentiation between untrustworthy and trustworthy faces. Moreover, individuals with higher perceived neighborhood disorder and less LPP differentiation were less likely to commit a variety of crimes, whereas those with higher perceptions of neighborhood disorder and high LPP differentiation were more likely to commit a variety of crimes. Combined, these findings suggest that similarly processing trustworthy and untrustworthy faces, as indexed by less LPP differentiation, may reflect an adaptation among those with higher perceived neighborhood disorder that mitigates against deviant behavior and contacts with the law. Understanding the intersection between neighborhood characteristics and individual-level cognitiveaffective processing may provide insight into what shapes beliefs and behaviors about important social information.

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“…The stimulus generalization and stimulus RT findings suggest that 5-HTT -/rats may respond gradually more trustworthy to the stimuli, to finally categorize the ambiguous stimuli in the same way as 5-HTT +/+ did. The initial less trustworthy response to the ambiguous stimuli in 5-HTT -/rats may reflect an aversive emotion (FeldmanHall et al 2018) , in line with the anxious phenotype of these animals (Olivier et al 2008) . However, the 5-HTT +/+ rats behaved in the opposite way and gradually responded less trustworthy (or more suspicious) to the stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…This type of decision-making is much related to emotion, not only in humans (Rustichini 2005) but also in animals (Nguyen et al 2020) . While positive or rewarding emotions may be experienced when the decision turns out to be a good one, untrustworthy ambiguous information triggers aversive emotions (FeldmanHall et al 2018) . To measure trustworthiness of information during decision-making we propose to add the aspect of "believing" to the concept of decisional anhedonia during decision-making under ambiguity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knockout of the serotonin transporter in the rat mildly modulates decisional anhedonia

Guo¹,

Verheij²,

Homberg³

2020

Preprint

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AbstractSerotonin transporter gene variance has long been considered an important factor contributing to depression. However, meta-analyses yielded inconsistent findings recently, asking for further understanding of the link between the gene and depression-related symptoms. One key feature of depression is anhedonia. Anhedonia is not one united feature but involves consummatory, anticipatory, and decisional aspects. These different aspects of anhedonia can be particularly well investigated in rodents. While data exist on the effect of serotonin transporter gene knockout in rodents on consummatory and anticipatory anhedonia, with mixed outcomes, the effect on decisional anhedonia has not been investigated thus far in rats. Here, we tested whether serotonin transporter knockout (5-HTT−/−) contributes to decisional anhedonia. To this end, we established a novel touchscreen-based task employing a ‘go/go’ task for decision-making under ambiguity. Both genotypes of rats were able to reach 70% accuracy across three consecutive sessions. However, 5-HTT+/+ rats performed more optimal decision-making compared to 5-HTT−/− rats during the course of discriminative conditioning for the conditioned stimulus associated with high reward value at the beginning. 5-HTT−/− rats gradually reduced response time to generalization stimuli compared to 5-HTT+/+ rats across the three generalization test sessions without altering the monotonic graded responses towards the stimuli. These data indicate that 5-HTT−/− rats initially processed the reward related ambiguous information in an anhedonic mode, which gradually over sessions turned into a hedonic mode of processing. The results suggest that the association between the serotonin transporter gene and anhedonia may dynamically change over time when processing ambiguous information. This may explain the inconsistent findings on the association between the serotonin transporter gene and various aspects of depression in humans.

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Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust

Cited by 91 publications

References 50 publications

Generalization of appetitive conditioned responses

Generalization of appetitive conditioned responses

Living in a Disadvantaged Neighborhood Affects Neural Processing of Facial Trustworthiness

Knockout of the serotonin transporter in the rat mildly modulates decisional anhedonia

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