Braunwarth Jana Isabelle, Ferdinand Nicola Kristina
Department of Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Gaußstraße 20, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025 Mar 27. doi: 10.3758/s13415-025-01284-2.
Learning from the emotional reaction of others is crucial in our everyday lives. We assumed that additional emotional information could be especially beneficial, when a task is difficult and the limits of working memory capacity are reached. For this reason, we examined whether a potential benefit of emotional feedback during reinforcement learning is dependent on working memory load. In addition to learning performance, we analysed the neural mechanisms of reinforcement learning by examining two event-related potentials (ERPs): feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P3b. Participants were divided into two difficulty groups (with n = 21 in the difficult and n = 22 in the easy group), performing a learning task with emotional or non-emotional feedback. Task difficulty was manipulated by varying the number of stimulus-response associations. Participants' showed learning in all conditions. Emotional feedback led to increased accuracy and decreased reaction times in both groups. However, this benefit occurred earlier in the easy condition. The detection of unexpected events, as reflected in the peak-to-peak FRN, as well as working memory updating, as reflected in the P3b, were enhanced after emotional in contrast to non-emotional feedback for both groups. In contrast, task difficulty had no effect on the detection of unexpected events but led to a P3b that was more evenly distributed over the scalp, which could indicate that additional frontal resources were recruited to perform the difficult task. Our results suggest that working memory load and emotional information independently influence feedback processing without interacting.
从他人的情绪反应中学习在我们的日常生活中至关重要。我们假设，当任务困难且达到工作记忆容量的极限时，额外的情绪信息可能会特别有益。出于这个原因，我们研究了强化学习过程中情绪反馈的潜在益处是否依赖于工作记忆负荷。除了学习表现外，我们还通过检查两种事件相关电位（ERP）：反馈相关负波（FRN）和P3b，来分析强化学习的神经机制。参与者被分为两个难度组（困难组n = 21，容易组n = 22），进行带有情绪或非情绪反馈的学习任务。通过改变刺激-反应关联的数量来操纵任务难度。所有条件下参与者均表现出学习。情绪反馈使两组的准确性提高，反应时间缩短。然而，这种益处出现在容易条件下的时间更早。与非情绪反馈相比，情绪反馈后，两组中由峰峰值FRN反映的意外事件检测以及由P3b反映的工作记忆更新均得到增强。相比之下，任务难度对意外事件的检测没有影响，但导致P3b在头皮上分布更均匀，这可能表明为执行困难任务调用了额外的额叶资源。我们的结果表明，工作记忆负荷和情绪信息独立影响反馈处理，互不干扰。
