Evans Kelly L, Hampson Elizabeth
Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London ON, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2015 Jul 22;6:1044. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01044. eCollection 2015.
Increasing evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is influenced by sex steroids and that some cognitive functions dependent on the PFC may be sexually differentiated in humans. Past work has identified a male advantage on certain complex reinforcement learning tasks, but it is unclear which latent task components are important to elicit the sex difference. The objective of the current study was to investigate whether there are sex differences on measures of response inhibition and valenced feedback processing, elements that are shared by previously studied reinforcement learning tasks. Healthy young adults (90 males, 86 females) matched in general intelligence completed the Probabilistic Selection Task (PST), a Simon task, and the Stop-Signal task. On the PST, females were more accurate than males in learning from positive (but not negative) feedback. On the Simon task, males were faster than females, especially in the face of incongruent stimuli. No sex difference was observed in Stop-Signal reaction time. The current findings provide preliminary support for a sex difference in the processing of valenced feedback and in interference inhibition.
越来越多的证据表明，前额叶皮层（PFC）受性类固醇影响，且人类中一些依赖前额叶皮层的认知功能可能存在性别差异。过去的研究已确定男性在某些复杂强化学习任务上具有优势，但尚不清楚哪些潜在任务成分对于引发性别差异至关重要。本研究的目的是调查在反应抑制和效价反馈处理的测量指标上是否存在性别差异，这些是先前研究的强化学习任务所共有的要素。一般智力匹配的健康年轻成年人（90名男性，86名女性）完成了概率选择任务（PST）、西蒙任务和停止信号任务。在概率选择任务中，女性在从积极（而非消极）反馈中学习时比男性更准确。在西蒙任务中，男性比女性更快，尤其是面对不一致的刺激时。在停止信号反应时间上未观察到性别差异。当前研究结果为效价反馈处理和干扰抑制方面的性别差异提供了初步支持。
