Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Cognition. 2024 Mar;244:105714. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105714. Epub 2024 Jan 3.
In many decision problems, outcomes are not reached after a single action but rather after a series of events or states. To optimize decisions over multiple states, representations of how good or bad the outcomes are, that is, the outcomes' valence, should spread across states. One mechanism for valence spreading is a temporal, state-independent process in which a single valence representation is updated when an outcome is experienced and fades away afterwards. Each state's valence is based on its temporal proximity to the experienced outcome. An alternative, state-dependent mechanism relies on the structure of transitions between states, updating a separate valence representation for each state according to its spatial distance from the outcomes. We examined how these mechanistic accounts shape the spread of two formats of valence representation, feelings (affective valence) and knowledge (semantic valence), between states. In two pre-registered experiments (N = 585), we used a novel task in which participants move in a four-state maze, one of which contains an outcome. The participants provide self-reports of affective and semantic valence throughout the maze and after finishing it. Results show that the affective representation of negative valence is more localized in state-space than the semantic representation. We also found evidence for the relative reliance of the affective valence on a temporal, state-independent mechanism and of the semantic valence on a structured, state-dependent mechanism. Our findings provide mechanistic accounts for the differences between affective and semantic valence representations and indicate how such representations may play a role in associative learning and decision-making.
在许多决策问题中，结果不是在单次行动后达成，而是在一系列事件或状态之后。为了在多个状态下优化决策，应该在状态之间传播表示结果好坏的表示，即结果的效价。效价传播的一种机制是时间上独立于状态的过程，其中在体验到结果后更新单个效价表示，并随后逐渐消失。每个状态的效价基于其与体验到的结果的时间接近程度。另一种替代的、依赖于状态的机制依赖于状态之间的转换结构，根据每个状态与其结果之间的空间距离，为每个状态更新单独的效价表示。我们研究了这些机制如何在状态之间形成两种效价表示形式（感觉效价和知识效价）的传播。在两个预先注册的实验（N=585）中，我们使用了一种新的任务，参与者在一个四状态迷宫中移动，其中一个状态包含一个结果。参与者在整个迷宫中以及完成后提供对情感和语义效价的自我报告。结果表明，负效价的情感表示在状态空间中比语义表示更具局部性。我们还发现了情感效价相对依赖于时间上独立于状态的机制和语义效价依赖于结构上依赖于状态的机制的证据。我们的研究结果为情感和语义效价表示之间的差异提供了机制解释，并表明这些表示如何在联想学习和决策中发挥作用。
