2010/05/07 by James F. Cavanagh, Michael J. Frank, John J. B. Allen · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Stress Responses and Cortisol #Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies #Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior #Psychology #Punishment (psychology) #Trait #Affect (linguistics) #Reinforcement #Developmental psychology #Reinforcement learning #Reactivity (psychology) #Social learning #Cognitive psychology #Cognition #Vulnerability (computing) #Social psychology #Neuroscience #Communication #Artificial intelligence
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/scan/nsq041
openalex publication_date 2010/05/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
To examine how stress affects cognitive functioning, individual differences in trait vulnerability (punishment sensitivity) and state reactivity (negative affect) to social evaluative threat were examined during concurrent reinforcement learning. Lower trait-level punishment sensitivity predicted better reward learning and poorer punishment learning; the opposite pattern was found in more punishment sensitive individuals. Increasing state-level negative affect was directly related to punishment learning accuracy in highly punishment sensitive individuals, but these measures were inversely related in less sensitive individuals. Combined electrophysiological measurement, performance accuracy and computational estimations of learning parameters suggest that trait and state vulnerability to stress alter cortico-striatal functioning during reinforcement learning, possibly mediated via medio-frontal cortical systems.