The influence of exposure to early-life adversity on agency-modulated reinforcement learning

Abstract

Agency beliefs influence how humans learn from different contexts and outcomes. Research demonstrates that stressors, such as exposure to early-life adversity (ELA), are associated with both agency beliefs and learning, but how these processes interact remains unclear. The current study investigated whether exposure to ELA influences agency and interacts with reinforcement learning in adults. Replicating prior behavioral and computational work, ELA resulted in decreased learning, while increased adversity severity was associated with decreased latent agency beliefs. These findings suggest that exposure to adversity in childhood has a nuanced impact on reinforcement learning and agency beliefs in adulthood.

Figure 1.

Behavioral task schematic. (A) Participants were instructed that different hidden agents frequent each territory: a bandit steals gold from the mines and replaces it with rocks (adversarial condition), a tycoon leaves extra gold in the mines (benevolent condition), and a sheriff will redistribute gold and rocks in the mines (neutral condition). Participants are told the hidden agent intervention condition (adversarial, benevolent, or neutral) at the start of each block. (B) Participants make a choice on a two-armed bandit (left). They then receive either positive (gold) or negative (rocks) feedback and judge whether or not they believe that the hidden agent intervened on the current trial. (Dorfman et al. 2019; reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.)

Figure 2.

The model-derived probability of agency (ψ) is negatively correlated with continuous ELA severity.

Figure 3.

Participants in the ELA group had significantly lower average learning rates from the winning model compared to participants without ELA exposure.