Investigating Learning, Decision-Making, and Mental Health in Pregnancy: Insights From a UK Cohort Study.

Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) Pub Date : 2025-09-03 eCollection Date: 2025-01-01 DOI:10.5334/cpsy.134
Ilaria Costantini, Axel Montout, Paul Moran, Daphne Kounali, Rebecca M Pearson, Casimir J H Ludwig
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Abstract

Background: Parental capacity to learn from infant responses is a fundamental component of early dyadic interactions. However, the precise cognitive processes involved in these interactions and how these processes are influenced by mental health difficulties remain unclear.

Methods: We investigated the computational basis of learning and decision-making in males and nulliparous females (Study 1) and pregnant participants enrolled in a cohort study (Study 2), using a two-armed bandit task adapted to simulate playful interactions with an infant. Participants chose between two competing bandits (i.e., two toys) with different underlying nominal probabilities for three outcomes (i.e., infant sad, neutral, and happy facial expressions). In Study 1, we manipulated the baseline emotional context of the task (i.e., the infant started either happy or sad) to investigate its effect on the processing of emotional feedback and decision-making. In both studies, we explored whether individual differences in mental health and personalities difficulties associated with variation in parameters.

Results: In Study 1, the emotional context manipulation influenced both learning rates and how neutral outcomes were evaluated. Participants starting with a happy infant exhibited faster learning and a more negative evaluation of neutral outcomes compared to those starting with a sad infant. In Study 2, participants reporting higher levels of personality difficulties and antenatal depressive symptoms showed reduced learning rates. These associations were weaker in Study 1.

Conclusions: Our findings provide novel evidence regarding the role of the emotional context in learning and decision-making processes. For parents with depressive symptoms and personality difficulties, dampened responsivity to emotional feedback and inflexibility in updating beliefs about the values of actions may underlie fewer sensitive behaviours when interacting with their infants.

调查孕期的学习、决策和心理健康:来自英国队列研究的见解。
背景:父母从婴儿反应中学习的能力是早期二元互动的基本组成部分。然而,涉及这些相互作用的确切认知过程以及这些过程如何受到心理健康问题的影响尚不清楚。方法:我们研究了男性和未生育女性(研究1)以及参加队列研究的怀孕参与者(研究2)的学习和决策的计算基础,使用双臂强盗任务来模拟与婴儿的游戏互动。参与者在两个相互竞争的强盗(即两个玩具)之间进行选择,这些强盗具有三种结果(即婴儿悲伤,中性和快乐的面部表情)的不同潜在名义概率。在研究1中,我们操纵了任务的基线情绪背景(即婴儿开始时是快乐的还是悲伤的)来研究其对情绪反馈和决策处理的影响。在这两项研究中,我们探讨了心理健康和人格困难的个体差异是否与参数的变化有关。结果:在研究1中,情绪情境操纵既影响学习率,也影响中性结果的评价。与那些从悲伤的婴儿开始的参与者相比,从快乐的婴儿开始的参与者表现出更快的学习速度和对中性结果的更负面的评价。在研究2中,报告较高程度人格困难和产前抑郁症状的参与者表现出较低的学习率。这些关联在研究1中较弱。结论:我们的研究结果为情绪环境在学习和决策过程中的作用提供了新的证据。对于有抑郁症状和人格困难的父母来说,对情绪反馈的反应迟钝和对行动价值观念的不灵活更新,可能是与婴儿互动时敏感行为减少的原因。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.30
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0.00%
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审稿时长
17 weeks
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