Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2023 Nov;205:107839. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2023.107839. Epub 2023 Oct 5.
Early life stress (ELS), including experiences with abuse and neglect, are related to several negative health outcomes in adulthood. One area that has received attention is the increased rate of substance abuse disorder in individuals who had experienced ELS. Given the critical role habitual behavior in the development of substance abuse, ELS may affect the trajectory of neural development such that habitual responding is more dominant than in individuals who did not experience ELS. Here, we examine learning of a probabilistic classification task (the Weather Prediction Task) in healthy young adults who reported significant ELS and those that did not. This task can be learned in a declarative, model-based manner, or in a more habitual, stimulus-response manner. Participants learned to choose the outcome (sun or rain) that was probabilistically associated with each cue combination through reinforcement on each trial. After 100 trials, the probabilities were reversed, and we conceptualized habitual behavior as perseverating responses based on the old probabilities. We also collected information about subjective socio-economic status (sSES), anxiety, depression, and substance use from participants. Using multiple regression, we found that our measure of habitual responding was correlated with reported alcohol use, suggesting that our measure of habit has validity for health behaviors. Furthermore, we found that some forms of early life stress led to greater response perseverance after contingencies were reversed. Overall, the results suggest that childhood adversity may contribute to the development of habit.
早期生活压力(ELS),包括虐待和忽视的经历,与成年人的几种负面健康结果有关。一个受到关注的领域是经历过 ELS 的个体滥用药物障碍的发生率增加。鉴于习惯性行为在药物滥用发展中的关键作用,ELS 可能会影响神经发育的轨迹,使得习惯性反应比没有经历过 ELS 的个体更为突出。在这里,我们研究了报告经历过 ELS 和未经历过 ELS 的健康年轻成年人在概率分类任务(天气预报任务)中的学习情况。这项任务可以通过陈述性、基于模型的方式,或者通过更习惯性的、刺激-反应方式来学习。参与者通过在每次试验中获得奖励来学习通过强化选择与每个线索组合相关的结果(太阳或雨)。在 100 次试验后,概率被反转,我们将基于旧概率的习惯性反应定义为持续反应。我们还从参与者那里收集了有关主观社会经济地位(sSES)、焦虑、抑郁和物质使用的信息。使用多元回归,我们发现我们习惯性反应的测量与报告的酒精使用相关,这表明我们的习惯测量对于健康行为是有效的。此外,我们发现某些形式的早期生活压力会导致在条件反转后更大的反应持续。总的来说,这些结果表明童年逆境可能导致习惯的形成。