ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2021
Lower Levels of Directed Exploration and Reflective Thinking Are Associated With Greater Anxiety and Depression.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Computational mechanisms of learning and forgetting differentiate affective and substance use disorders.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Article
- Directed exploration is reduced by an aversive interoceptive state induction in healthy individuals but not in those with affective disorders.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Distinct Computational Mechanisms of Uncertainty Processing Explain Opposing Exploratory Behaviors in Anxiety and Apathy.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2025Article
- The role of affective states in computational psychiatry.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Review
- Individuals with methamphetamine use disorder show reduced directed exploration and learning rates independent of an aversive interoceptive state induction.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Computational mechanisms underlying multi-step planning deficits in methamphetamine use disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Unraveling the Intricacies of Curiosity: A Comprehensive Study of Its Measures in the Chinese Context.PsyCh journal · 2025Article
- Directed exploration is reduced by an aversive interoceptive state induction in healthy individuals but not in those with affective disorders.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Meta-Analysis Reveals That Explore-Exploit Decisions are Dissociable by Activation in the Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex, Anterior Insula, and the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Information seeking and the expected utility of information about COVID-19 can be associated with uncertainty and related attitudes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The relationship between trait anxiety and sleep quality in college students: an exploratory analysis of physical activity as a moderator.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Kipiyecipakiciipe ("coming home"): a study protocol for a multi-method investigation of culturally grounded resilience against substance-use among Shawnee adults.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Individual differences in information demand have a low dimensional structure predicted by some curiosity traits.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Gyrophoric Acid, a Secondary Metabolite of Lichens, Exhibits Antidepressant and Anxiolytic Activity In Vivo in Wistar Rats.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- A causal role of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in random exploration.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Reviewing explore/exploit decision-making as a transdiagnostic target for psychosis, depression, and anxiety.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Review
- Information search under uncertainty across transdiagnostic psychopathology and healthy ageing.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Computational Mechanisms Underlying Multi-Step Planning Deficits in Methamphetamine Use Disorder.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Anxiety and depression are often associated with strong beliefs that entering specific situations will lead to aversive outcomes - even when these situations are objectively safe and avoiding them reduces well-being. A possible mechanism underlying this maladaptive avoidance behavior is a failure to reflect on: (1) appropriate levels of uncertainty about the situation, and (2) how this uncertainty could be reduced by seeking further information (i.e., exploration). To test this hypothesis, we asked a community sample of 416 individuals to complete measures of reflective cognition, exploration, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found significant associations between each of these measures in expected directions (i.e., positive relationships between reflective cognition and strategic information-seeking behavior or "directed exploration", and negative relationships between these measures and anxiety/depression symptoms). Further analyses suggested that the relationship between directed exploration and depression/anxiety was due in part to an ambiguity aversion promoting exploration in conditions where information-seeking was not beneficial (as opposed to only being due to under-exploration when more information would aid future choices). In contrast, reflectiveness was associated with greater exploration in appropriate settings and separately accounted for differences in reaction times, decision noise, and choice accuracy in expected directions. These results shed light on the mechanisms underlying information-seeking behavior and how they may contribute to symptoms of emotional disorders. They also highlight the potential clinical relevance of individual differences in reflectiveness and exploration and should motivate future research on their possible contributions to vulnerability and/or maintenance of affective disorders.
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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.