College students with depression symptom are more sensitive to task difficulty in reinforcement learning

Background

Depression is usually characterized by impairments in reward function, and shows altered motivation to reward in reinforcement learning. This study further explored whether task difficulty affects reinforcement learning in college students with and without depression symptom.

Methods

The depression symptom group (20) and the no depression symptom group (26) completed a probabilistic reward learning task with low, medium, and high difficulty levels, in which task the response bias to reward and the discriminability of reward were analyzed. Additionally, electrophysiological responses to reward and loss feedback were recorded and analyzed while they performed a simple gambling task.

Results

The depression symptom group showed more response bias to reward than the no depression symptom group when the task was easy and then exhibited more quickly decrease in response bias to reward as task difficulty increased. The no depression symptom group showed a decrease in response bias only in the high-difficulty condition. Further regression analyses showed that, the Feedback-related negativity (FRN) and theta oscillation could predict response bias change in the low-difficulty condition, the FRN and oscillations of theta and delta could predict response bias change in the medium and high-difficulty conditions.

Limitations

The electrophysiological responses to loss and reward were not recorded in the same task as the reinforcement learning behaviors.

Conclusions

College students with depression symptom are more sensitive to task difficulty during reinforcement learning. The FRN, and oscillations of theta and delta could predict reward leaning behavior.