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

描述（由申请人提供）：压力影响涉及风险和奖励处理的大脑系统，并影响情绪唤起信息的学习和保留。然而，尽管重要的决策和压力往往是齐头并进的，但人们对压力对决策过程的影响知之甚少。该提案概述了研究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。压力很可能对年轻人和老年人的决策过程产生重大影响，但对这两个群体的影响可能不同。先前的研究表明，随着年龄的增长，人们越来越倾向于优先考虑情绪调节，这导致了注意力和记忆力的年龄差异，老年人表现出积极（或反消极）效应。由于越来越关注情感调节，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，年龄和压力都会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）。了解压力对老年人和年轻人的决策过程产生不同影响的方式，应该有助于开发避免决策偏见和错误的方法。 重要的决定，如关于个人财务和医疗保健的决定，往往涉及巨大的压力，特别是在老年人中。本提案中的研究将提供有关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.