Cardiac sensitivity to rewards in cognitively inflexible nonclinical participants

PeerJ

article

José Luis Mata¹  Azahara Leonor Miranda Gálvez¹  Francisca López Torrecillas¹  Laura Miccoli² 

[1] Department of Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment, University of Granada;Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences, University of Jaén

关键词: Emotion;    Individual differences;    Heart rate;    Iowa Gambling Task;    Psychopathology;    Cognitive inflexibility;    Compulsivity;    Reinforcement learning;    Reward sensitivity;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.15318

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Background In psychopathologies characterized by compulsive decision-making, core impairments include cognitive inflexibility and excessive sensitivity to rewards. It has been posited that traits shared by nonclinical individuals and psychiatric patients could help explain the pathogenesis of compulsive decision-making. Methods To investigate whether cognitive inflexibility predisposes nonclinical individuals to poor choices and hyper-reactivity to reward, we recruited people with high and low scores for cognitive persistence and used the Iowa Gambling Task to assess decision-making and cardiac reactivity to monetary gains/losses. Results As is frequently observed in psychophysiological research, the data indicated discrepancies among self-reports, behavior, and physiology. Cognitive inflexibility was not related to worse performance; however, monetary gains, in line with the literature, prompted marked cardiac accelerations. Consistent with our research goal, only inflexible participants showed large cardiac accelerations during the largest monetary wins. Discussion Taken together, the data confirm an association between cognitive persistence and physiological reward sensitivity in a nonclinical population. The findings are in line with recent theories on the development of compulsive behaviors that consider cognitive inflexibility as a transdiagnostic impairment and predisposing factor for excessive reactivity to rewards, and might act both as a preexisting individual trait and drug-induced deficit.

【 授权许可】

CC BY