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Social anxiety and dynamic social reinforcement learning in a volatile environment.

ABSTRACT: Adaptive social behavior requires learning probabilities of social reward and punishment, and updating these probabilities when they change. Given prior research on aberrant reinforcement learning in affective disorders, this study examines how social anxiety affects probabilistic social reinforcement learning and dynamic updating of learned probabilities in a volatile environment. N=222 online participants completed questionnaires and a computerized ball-catching game with changing probabilities of reward and punishment. Dynamic learning rates were estimated to assess the relative importance ascribed to new information in response to volatility. Mixed-effects regression was used to analyze throw patterns as a function of social anxiety symptoms. Higher social anxiety predicted fewer throws to the previously punishing avatar and different learning rates after certain role changes, suggesting that social anxiety may be characterized by difficulty updating learned social probabilities. Socially anxious individuals may miss the chance to learn that a once-punishing situation no longer poses a threat.

SUBMITTER: Beltzer ML

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7451209 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Social anxiety and dynamic social reinforcement learning in a volatile environment.

Beltzer Miranda L ML Adams Stephen S Beling Peter A PA Teachman Bethany A BA

Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science 20190920 6

Adaptive social behavior requires learning probabilities of social reward and punishment, and updating these probabilities when they change. Given prior research on aberrant reinforcement learning in affective disorders, this study examines how social anxiety affects probabilistic social reinforcement learning and dynamic updating of learned probabilities in a volatile environment. N=222 online participants completed questionnaires and a computerized ball-catching game with changing probabilitie ...[more]

PMID: 32864197

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Project description:Different fields such as linguistics, teaching, and computing have demonstrated special interest in the study of sign languages (SL). However, the processes of teaching and learning these languages turn complex since it is unusual to find people teaching these languages that are fluent in both SL and the native language of the students. The teachings from deaf individuals become unique. Nonetheless, it is important for the student to lean on supportive mechanisms while being in the process of learning an SL. Bidirectional communication between deaf and hearing people through SL is a hot topic to achieve a higher level of inclusion. However, all the processes that convey teaching and learning SL turn difficult and complex since it is unusual to find SL teachers that are fluent also in the native language of the students, making it harder to provide computer teaching tools for different SL. Moreover, the main aspects that a second language learner of an SL finds difficult are phonology, non-manual components, and the use of space (the latter two are specific to SL, not to spoken languages). This proposal appears to be the first of the kind to favor the Costa Rican Sign Language (LESCO, for its Spanish acronym), as well as any other SL. Our research focus stands on reinforcing the learning process of final-user hearing people through a modular architectural design of a learning environment, relying on the concept of phonological proximity within a graphical tool with a high degree of usability. The aim of incorporating phonological proximity is to assist individuals in learning signs with similar handshapes. This architecture separates the logic and processing aspects from those associated with the access and generation of data, which makes it portable to other SL in the future. The methodology used consisted of defining 26 phonological parameters (13 for each hand), thus characterizing each sign appropriately. Then, a similarity formula was applied to compare each pair of signs. With these pre-calculations, the tool displays each sign and its top ten most similar signs. A SUS usability test and an open qualitative question were applied, as well as a numerical evaluation to a group of learners, to validate the proposal. In order to reach our research aims, we have analyzed previous work on proposals for teaching tools meant for the student to practice SL, as well as previous work on the importance of phonological proximity in this teaching process. This previous work justifies the necessity of our proposal, whose benefits have been proved through the experimentation conducted by different users on the usability and usefulness of the tool. To meet these needs, homonymous words (signs with the same starting handshape) and paronyms (signs with highly similar handshape), have been included to explore their impact on learning. It allows the possibility to apply the same perspective of our existing line of research to other SL in the future.

Dataset Information

Social anxiety and dynamic social reinforcement learning in a volatile environment.

Publications

Social anxiety and dynamic social reinforcement learning in a volatile environment.

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