Individuals with adverse childhood experiences explore less and underweight reward feedback

Significance

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are extreme stressors that have a profound impact on cognitive development. Using an explore/exploit foraging paradigm, we demonstrate that ACEs are associated with reduced exploration, leading these individuals to accumulate fewer rewards from their environment. Using computational modeling, we identify that reduced exploration is associated with ACE-exposed individuals underweighting reward feedback, which highlights a cognitive mechanism that may link childhood trauma to the onset and maintenance of psychopathology.

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are extreme stressors that lead to negative psychosocial outcomes in adulthood. Nonhuman animals explore less after exposure to early stress. Therefore, in this preregistered study, we hypothesized that reduced exploration following ACEs would also be evident in human adults. Further, we predicted that adults with ACEs, in a foraging task, would adopt a decision-making policy that relies on the most-recent reward feedback, a rational strategy for unstable environments. We analyzed data from 145 adult participants, 47 with four or more ACEs and 98 with fewer than four ACEs. In the foraging task, participants evaluated the trade-off between exploiting a known patch with diminishing rewards and exploring a novel one with a fresh distribution of rewards. Using computational modeling, we quantified the degree to which participants’ decisions weighted recent feedback. As predicted, participants with ACEs explored less. However, contrary to our hypothesis, they underweighted recent feedback. These unexpected findings indicate that early adversity may dampen reward sensitivity. Our results may help to identify cognitive mechanisms that link childhood trauma to the onset of psychopathology.