Namba Shushi, Saito Akie, Sato Wataru
Psychological Process Team, Guardian Robot Project, RIKEN, Kyoto, Japan.
Department of Psychology, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2024 May 23;15:1281857. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1281857. eCollection 2024.
The rapid detection of neutral faces with emotional value plays an important role in social relationships for both young and older adults. Recent psychological studies have indicated that young adults show efficient value learning for neutral faces and the detection of "value-associated faces," while older adults show slightly different patterns of value learning and value-based detection of neutral faces. However, the mechanisms underlying these processes remain unknown. To investigate this, we applied hierarchical reinforcement learning and diffusion models to a value learning task and value-driven detection task that involved neutral faces; the tasks were completed by young and older adults. The results for the learning task suggested that the sensitivity of learning feedback might decrease with age. In the detection task, the younger adults accumulated information more efficiently than the older adults, and the perceptual time leading to motion onset was shorter in the younger adults. In younger adults only, the reward sensitivity during associative learning might enhance the accumulation of information during a visual search for neutral faces in a rewarded task. These results provide insight into the processing linked to efficient detection of faces associated with emotional values, and the age-related changes therein.
快速检测具有情感价值的中性面孔在年轻人和老年人的社会关系中都起着重要作用。最近的心理学研究表明，年轻人对中性面孔和“价值相关面孔”的检测表现出高效的价值学习能力，而老年人在中性面孔的价值学习和基于价值的检测方面表现出略有不同的模式。然而，这些过程背后的机制仍然未知。为了研究这一点，我们将分层强化学习和扩散模型应用于涉及中性面孔的价值学习任务和价值驱动的检测任务；这些任务由年轻人和老年人完成。学习任务的结果表明，学习反馈的敏感性可能会随着年龄的增长而降低。在检测任务中，年轻人比老年人更有效地积累信息，并且年轻人中导致运动开始的感知时间更短。仅在年轻人中，联想学习期间的奖励敏感性可能会增强在奖励任务中对中性面孔进行视觉搜索时的信息积累。这些结果为与有效检测与情感价值相关的面孔及其年龄相关变化相关的处理过程提供了见解。
