Early adversity and learning: implications for typical and atypical behavioral development
Early adversity and learning: implications for typical and atypical behavioral development
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DOI：
10.1111/jcpp.12694
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发表时间：
2017-07-01
影响因子：
7.6
通讯作者：
Pollak, Seth D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hanson, Jamie L.;van den Bos, Wouter;Pollak, Seth D.
背景：经历早期逆境的儿童通常会出现情绪调节问题，但对调节这种关系的机制知之甚少。我们测试了一般的联想学习过程是否有助于儿童虐待形式的逆境与负面行为结果之间的联系。方法：本研究招募了81名年龄在12-17岁之间的受试者，并完成了一项概率学习任务。这些参与者中有41人曾遭受身体虐待，这是早期逆境的一种形式。另外40名没有任何已知虐待史的参与者作为对照组。所有参与者(和他们的父母)也完成了青年生活压力访谈的部分内容，以了解青少年的行为。我们计算了联想学习的测量，并构建了学习的数学模型。结果：我们发现，与对照青少年相比，早年暴露在高水平逆境中的青少年联想学习水平较低。此外，我们发现，联想学习受损部分解释了早期遭遇逆境的年轻人行为问题水平较高的原因。使用数学模型，我们还发现，暴露在逆境中的儿童学习的两个组成部分受到了特别的影响：选择的可变性和他们对环境中回报可能性的信念上的偏见。结论：经历过早期逆境的参与者比他们的同龄人更不能正确地学习哪些刺激可能导致奖励，即使在反复反馈之后也是如此。这些人也较少使用有关他们所在环境中已知奖励的信息。此外，暴露在逆境中的人在学习过程的早期就做出了决定，就好像奖励不那么一致，发生的更随机。这些数据表明了早期生活经历塑造行为发展的一种机制。
Background: Children who experience early adversity often develop emotion regulatory problems, but little is known about the mechanisms that mediate this relation. We tested whether general associative learning processes contribute to associations between adversity, in the form of child maltreatment, and negative behavioral outcomes. Methods: Eighty-one participants between 12 and 17 years of age were recruited for this study and completed a probabilistic learning Task. Forty-one of these participants had been exposed to physical abuse, a form of early adversity. Forty additional participants without any known history of maltreatment served as a comparison group. All participants (and their parents) also completed portions of the Youth Life Stress Interview to understand adolescent's behavior. We calculated measures of associative learning, and also constructed mathematical models of learning. Results: We found that adolescents exposed to high levels of adversity early in their lives had lower levels of associative learning than comparison adolescents. In addition, we found that impaired associative learning partially explained the higher levels of behavioral problems among youth who suffered early adversity. Using mathematical models, we also found that two components of learning were specifically affected in children exposed to adversity: choice variability and biases in their beliefs about the likelihood of rewards in the environment. Conclusions: Participants who had been exposed to early adversity were less able than their peers to correctly learn which stimuli were likely to result in reward, even after repeated feedback. These individuals also used information about known rewards in their environments less often. In addition, individuals exposed to adversity made decisions early in the learning process as if rewards were less consistent and occurred more at random. These data suggest one mechanism through which early life experience shapes behavioral development.