The Effects of Stress on Reward Learning Among Younger and Older Adults

描述(由申请者提供)：压力影响参与风险和回报处理的大脑系统，并影响情绪唤醒信息的学习和保持。然而，尽管重要的决定往往与压力密切相关，但人们对压力对决策过程的影响知之甚少。这项建议概述了调查急性压力对年轻人和老年人在投资任务中的学习和表现的影响的研究。压力可能会对年轻人和老年人的决策过程产生重大影响，但对两组人的影响可能不同。之前的研究表明，随着人们年龄的增长，他们越来越有可能优先考虑情绪调节，这会导致注意力和记忆力的年龄差异，老年人表现出积极(或反消极)的效果。由于这种对情感调节的日益关注，老年人比年轻人更有可能在决策中受到奖励结果(而不是损失结果)的不成比例的影响。压力应该放大(实验1)或缩小(实验2)这些年龄差异，这取决于压力的时间。此外，年龄和压力都应该影响决策者放弃不再成功的策略并学习新策略的能力(实验3)。了解压力如何以不同的方式影响老年人和年轻人的决策过程，应该会促进避免决策偏见和错误的方法的发展。 重要的决定，如关于个人财务和医疗保健的决定，往往会带来巨大的压力，特别是在老年人中。这项提案中的研究将提供关于压力如何影响学习和决策以及这些影响如何随年龄变化的重要信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Stress affects brain systems involved in risk and reward processing and influences learning and retention of emotionally arousing information. Yet, despite the fact that important decisions and stress often go hand in hand, little is known about the influence of stress on decision processes. This proposal outlines studies to investigate the effect of acute stress on learning and performance in investment tasks for younger and older adults. Stress is likely to have a significant impact on both younger and older adults' decision processes, but the effects may differ for the two groups. Previous research indicates that as people age, they are increasingly likely to prioritize emotion regulation and that this leads to age differences in attention and memory, with older adults showing a positivity (or anti-negativity) effect. Because of this increased focus on affect regulation, older adults are more likely than younger adults to be disproportionately influenced by reward outcomes (rather than loss outcomes) in their decisions. Stress should to amplify (Experiment 1) or diminish (Experiment 2) these age differences, depending on the timing of the stress. In addition, both age and stress should influence decision makers' ability to abandon a no-longer successful strategy and learn a new one (Experiment 3). Understanding the ways in which stress can influence decision processes differently for older and younger adults should promote development of ways to avoid decision biases and errors. Important decisions, such as those regarding personal finances and health care, often involve substantial stress, especially among older adults. The studies in this proposal will provide important information about how stress affects learning and decisions and how those effects may vary with age.