Trial reportPsychology and aging2013
Stress modulates reinforcement learning in younger and older adults.
Trial report in Psychology and aging, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed.
- Learning in a crisis moment: a randomized controlled trial in emergency bystander intervention.BMC psychology · 2023Trial
- Effects of stress-induced inflammation on reward processing in healthy young women.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2020Trial
- Acute stress improves long-term reward maximization in decision-making under uncertainty.Brain and cognition · 2019Trial
- Updating Beliefs under Perceived Threat.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2018Trial
- Trial
- Acute stress induces circuit-specific alterations in mesolimbic and nigrostriatal inhibitory transmission and potentiates operant learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Interplay Among Reward Processing, Schizotypal Traits, and Psychosocial Stress in a Large Chinese Young Adult Sample: A Cross-Sectional Network Analysis.PsyCh journal · 2026Article
- Estrous cycle stage gates the effect of stress on reward learning.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Acute stress impairs decision-making at varying levels of decision complexity.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- No evidence for increased habitual or decreased goal-directed action control after acute stress.PloS one · 2025Article
- Stress to inflammation and anhedonia: Mechanistic insights from preclinical and clinical models.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Comparison between the Effects of Acute Physical and Psychosocial Stress on Feedback-Based Learning.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Prolonged Physiological Stress Is Associated With a Lower Rate of Exploratory Learning That Is Compounded by Depression.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2023Article
- Aging, uncertainty, and decision making-A review.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Review
- The role of inflammation in acute psychosocial stress-induced modulation of reward processing in healthy female adults.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2023Article
- Effect of real-world fear on risky decision-making in medical school-based students: A quasi-experimental study.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Neither Threat of Shock nor Acute Psychosocial Stress Affects Ambiguity Attitudes.Affective science · 2022Article
- Impact of Perceived Stress and Immune Status on Decision-Making Abilities during COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Association of Environmental Uncertainty With Altered Decision-making and Learning Mechanisms in Youths With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.JAMA network open · 2021Article
- Self-beneficial belief updating as a coping mechanism for stress-induced negative affect.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Animal research and human neuroimaging studies indicate that stress increases dopamine levels in brain regions involved in reward processing, and stress also appears to increase the attractiveness of addictive drugs. The current study tested the hypothesis that stress increases reward salience, leading to more effective learning about positive than negative outcomes in a probabilistic selection task. Changes to dopamine pathways with age raise the question of whether stress effects on incentive-based learning differ by age. Thus, the present study also examined whether effects of stress on reinforcement learning differed for younger (age 18-34) and older participants (age 65-85). Cold pressor stress was administered to half of the participants in each age group, and salivary cortisol levels were used to confirm biophysiological response to cold stress. After the manipulation, participants completed a probabilistic learning task involving positive and negative feedback. In both younger and older adults, stress enhanced learning about cues that predicted positive outcomes. In addition, during the initial learning phase, stress diminished sensitivity to recent feedback across age groups. These results indicate that stress affects reinforcement learning in both younger and older adults and suggests that stress exerts different effects on specific components of reinforcement learning depending on their neural underpinnings.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.