Individual differences and modulation of conflict monitoring intensity as a determinant of avoidance learning: Evidence for an integrative ACC theory?

• Applicants: Professor Dr. André Beauducel; Professorin Dr. Anja Leue
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2008 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 98772683

As an extension of prior findings illustrating the modulation of the conflict monitoring intensity by means of required effort and aversive reinforcement we aim at investigating conflict monitoring and passive avoidance learning in the context of recent theories on anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity. For several years, both researchers have successfully collaborated as a dual-career couple as they officially do since 2012 at the University of Bonn. Till date, the neural processes of conflict monitoring and passive avoidance learning as one form of reinforcement learning have been investigated rather independently. However, as long as it has not yet been investigated whether, as postulated by Botvinick, an intensified conflict monitoring results in an intensified passive avoidance learning during task performance, we cannot conclude that an intensified conflict monitoring serves as an aversive teaching signal in decision-making processes and during passive avoidance learning. Those findings would, however, further the most recent and extensive theoretical debate on the functional relevance of the ACC. One possibility to enhance the conflict monitoring intensity and subsequent passive avoidance learning is the quasi-experimental manipulation of motivational factors. In this respect, in Study 1 we aim at varying an individuals motivation by using a maximal vs. average cognitive effort trial-by-trial treatment during performance of a discrimination task. We expect that an increased conflict monitoring intensity induced by means of an individuals effort motivation should intensify passive avoidance learning. If an intensified conflict monitoring and subsequently an intensified passive avoidance learning are of importance for every-day contexts the effect of intensified conflict monitoring on avoidance learning should generalize to discrimination tasks that are embedded into every-day contexts. In Study 2, participants perform discrimination tasks that are based on a vignette describing a more natural context. The possibility to induce conflict monitoring and passive avoidance learning by means of a discrimination task based on faces and a discrimination task based on a vignette has been shown in preliminary studies. Moreover, the presence of peers is manipulated in order to modulate conflict monitoring and thereby passive avoidance learning. To test our hypotheses, well-known event-related potentials are assessed by means of a multi-channel electroencephalogram along with behavioral parameters in large samples (more than 120 participants per study). To investigate the direct relations of individual differences in conflict monitoring and passive avoidance learning growth-modeling is applied as an innovative statistical analysis tool.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants