Unger Kerstin, Heintz Sonja, Kray Jutta
Department of Psychology, Development of Language, Learning, and Action, Saarland University Saarbruecken, Germany.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2012 Jun 27;6:186. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00186. eCollection 2012.
Accumulating evidence suggests that individual differences in punishment and reward sensitivity are associated with functional alterations in neural systems underlying error and feedback processing. In particular, individuals highly sensitive to punishment have been found to be characterized by larger mediofrontal error signals as reflected in the error negativity/error-related negativity (Ne/ERN) and the feedback-related negativity (FRN). By contrast, reward sensitivity has been shown to relate to the error positivity (Pe). Given that Ne/ERN, FRN, and Pe have been functionally linked to flexible behavioral adaptation, the aim of the present research was to examine how these electrophysiological reflections of error and feedback processing vary as a function of punishment and reward sensitivity during reinforcement learning. We applied a probabilistic learning task that involved three different conditions of feedback validity (100%, 80%, and 50%). In contrast to prior studies using response competition tasks, we did not find reliable correlations between punishment sensitivity and the Ne/ERN. Instead, higher punishment sensitivity predicted larger FRN amplitudes, irrespective of feedback validity. Moreover, higher reward sensitivity was associated with a larger Pe. However, only reward sensitivity was related to better overall learning performance and higher post-error accuracy, whereas highly punishment sensitive participants showed impaired learning performance, suggesting that larger negative feedback-related error signals were not beneficial for learning or even reflected maladaptive information processing in these individuals. Thus, although our findings indicate that individual differences in reward and punishment sensitivity are related to electrophysiological correlates of error and feedback processing, we found less evidence for influences of these personality characteristics on the relation between performance monitoring and feedback-based learning.
越来越多的证据表明，惩罚和奖励敏感性的个体差异与错误和反馈处理背后的神经系统功能改变有关。特别是，已发现对惩罚高度敏感的个体的特征是，在错误负波/错误相关负波（Ne/ERN）和反馈相关负波（FRN）中反映出更大的额中回错误信号。相比之下，奖励敏感性已被证明与错误正波（Pe）有关。鉴于Ne/ERN、FRN和Pe在功能上与灵活的行为适应相关，本研究的目的是考察在强化学习过程中，这些错误和反馈处理的电生理反映如何随惩罚和奖励敏感性而变化。我们应用了一个概率学习任务，该任务涉及三种不同的反馈有效性条件（100%、80%和50%）。与先前使用反应竞争任务的研究不同，我们没有发现惩罚敏感性与Ne/ERN之间存在可靠的相关性。相反，更高的惩罚敏感性预测了更大的FRN波幅，而与反馈有效性无关。此外，更高的奖励敏感性与更大的Pe相关。然而，只有奖励敏感性与更好的整体学习表现和更高的错误后准确性有关，而对惩罚高度敏感的参与者表现出学习表现受损，这表明更大的负反馈相关错误信号对学习没有益处，甚至反映了这些个体中适应不良的信息处理。因此，尽管我们的研究结果表明奖励和惩罚敏感性的个体差异与错误和反馈处理的电生理相关，但我们发现这些人格特征对绩效监测和基于反馈的学习之间关系的影响证据较少。
