Impact of Reward History on Cognitive Control Across Domains

• In Event: 3-030 - Reward and Cognition Interactions in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

Integrative Statement

Rapid changes in reward response and cognitive control have been documented across adolescence and early adulthood. Reward-biased processing has been shown to disrupt cognitive control (Krebs, et al., 2011; Anderson, 2011; Somerville, et al., 2011). However, the mechanisms through which reward history disrupts cognitive control is not fully understood. These studies aim to characterize reward-related disruption of cognitive control in attention and motor domains in emerging adults and explore how these domains may interact. Two studies in emerging adults (ages mean age = 20.0, 68% female, Study 1 N = 41; mean age = 21.9, 60% female Study 2 N = 45) first train reward-biased attention to a given colored circle using a search display of 6 circles and a discrimination task. Two circles served as targets, but only one was associated with monetary reward. These circles corresponded to the previously unrewarded (PU) and previously rewarded (PR) stimuli that were later used in the testing tasks. In order to test attentional bias, PR, PU, and neutral stimuli served as non-predictive cues in a modified posner cueing task (used in Failing & Theeuwes, 2014). Across both studies we show that rewarding attention to a stimulus later disrupts attentional control when the PR stimulus serves as a meaningless cue and this disruption is more robust when participants were aware of reward contingencies (p’s < .05). Further, this reward-driven bias was characterized both by facilitated capture and impaired disengagement from the PR stimulus (p’s < .05). Participants in Study 2 additionally completed a Go/No-Go task in which the PR and PU stimuli served as the No-Go stimuli. Interestingly, whereas reward history lead to decrements in task performance on the attention task, on the Go/No-Go task, significantly fewer false alarms were committed to PR stimuli as compared to PU stimuli (p < .05). This indicates that reward-related biasing of attention disrupts attentional control but facilitates motor inhibitory control, consistent with a context monitoring account of inhibitory control. A third study in emerging adults (mean age = 21.9, 49% female, N = 39) tested effects of reward history on inhibitory control when reward training was not just in the attention domain, but also included training a motor response to obtain reward, using the Monetary Incentive Delay Task. Inhibitory control was tested using an identical Go/No-Go task in which the stimuli that served as PR and PU stimuli in the MID now served as No-Go stimuli. After motor-related reward training, participants committed significantly more false alarms to PR than PU stimuli (p < .05), demonstrating a reward-related disruption in inhibitory control. Together, these studies help to better characterize reward-driven impacts on cognition in emerging adults and demonstrate that reward-related biases may be at least in part domain specific. Emerging adulthood is an important developmental period which directly follows the rapid development of both reward and cognitive control in adolescence. Thus characterizing reward-cognition interactions in this period is an important next step for the literature which has focused primarily on adolescent specific development of these systems.

Authors

• Kristin Nicole Meyer, UNC Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Juliet Davidow, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Leah H. Somerville, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joseph Hopfinger, UNC Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Margaret Sheridan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author