To Reveal or Not to Reveal? Observation of Social Outcomes Facilitates Reward Processing

Multimodal mechanisms of human socially reinforced learning across neurodegenerative diseases

Social feedback can selectively enhance learning in diverse domains. Relevant neurocognitive mechanisms have been studied mainly in healthy persons, yielding correlational findings. Neurodegenerative lesion models, coupled with multimodal brain measures, can complement standard approaches by revealing direct multidimensional correlates of the phenomenon.

To this end, we assessed socially reinforced and non-socially reinforced learning in 40 healthy participants as well as persons with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (n = 21), Parkinson’s disease (n = 31) and Alzheimer’s disease (n = 20). These conditions are typified by predominant deficits in social cognition, feedback-based learning and associative learning, respectively, although all three domains may be partly compromised in the other conditions. We combined a validated behavioural task with ongoing EEG signatures of implicit learning (medial frontal negativity) and offline MRI measures (voxel-based morphometry).

In healthy participants, learning was facilitated by social feedback relative to non-social feedback. In comparison with controls, this effect was specifically impaired in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia and Parkinson’s disease, while unspecific learning deficits (across social and non-social conditions) were observed in Alzheimer’s disease. EEG results showed increased medial frontal negativity in healthy controls during social feedback and learning. Such a modulation was selectively disrupted in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. Neuroanatomical results revealed extended temporo-parietal and fronto-limbic correlates of socially reinforced learning, with specific temporo-parietal associations in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia and predominantly fronto-limbic regions in Alzheimer’s disease. In contrast, non-socially reinforced learning was consistently linked to medial temporal/hippocampal regions. No associations with cortical volume were found in Parkinson’s disease. Results are consistent with core social deficits in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, subtle disruptions in ongoing feedback-mechanisms and social processes in Parkinson’s disease and generalized learning alterations in Alzheimer’s disease. This multimodal approach highlights the impact of different neurodegenerative profiles on learning and social feedback.

Our findings inform a promising theoretical and clinical agenda in the fields of social learning, socially reinforced learning and neurodegeneration.

Desire for Success Awakens: Proof of Competence Restoration in a Non-competitive Environment

Pioneering studies reported that individuals who worked on a highly difficult task and experienced competence frustration beforehand would activate a restorative process and show enhanced autonomous motivation in a subsequent irrelevant activity. In this follow-up study, we explored the effect of prior competition outcome on one’s autonomous motivation in a subsequent non-competitive environment. According to our experimental manipulation, participants were randomly assigned to two treatment groups (a winning group and a losing group) and a control group. The experiment lasted for three sessions. Participants in the control group completed a single-player stop-watch (SW) task all along, while those in both treatment groups worked on a competitive SW task and competed for monetary rewards during Session 2 only. Electrophysiological data in Session 1 serve as the baseline and measure one’s trait-level autonomous motivation towards the SW game. For participants in the losing group, more pronounced difference wave of feedback-related negativity was observed in Session 3 compared with Session 1, suggesting enhanced autonomous motivation in Session 3. Such a pattern was observed in neither the winning group nor the control group. These results suggested that failure in a prior competition would activate one’s competence restoration in a subsequent non-competitive environment. Task difficulty and social competition are varied sources of competence frustration. Thus, our findings advanced understanding of the competence restorative process and helped clarify the dynamics between competition and human motivation.

The Impact of Social Crowding on Consumers' Online Mobile Shopping: Evidence from Behavior and ERPs

Purpose

Social crowding refers to the extent of social presence and proximity to others. A large number of studies have explored the effect of social crowding on consumers' feelings and behaviours in real shopping scenes, whereas few studies have examined the potential marketing effect of social crowding on online mobile consumption behaviour despite mobile commerce's increasing popularity in recent years. The current intends to explore the effect of social crowding on online mobile purchase and its underlying neural basis.

Methods

The current study employed a questionnaire survey and an implicit panic buying experiment, in which the participants were asked to press the button as soon as possible to buy the showed product. A 2-level social crowding (low vs high) × 2-level feedback of panic buying (success vs fail) design was employed to test the negative impact of social crowding on consumers' online mobile purchase intention by using electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings.

Results

Behaviorally, participants showed higher purchase intention in low social crowding environment compared with the high crowding condition. The event-related potentials (ERPs) results indicated that consumers had a higher affective/motivational evaluation (reflected in a smaller feedback-related negativity (FRN) amplitude) regarding the successful rather than the failing feedback in the low social crowding condition. However, this difference was not detected in the high social crowding condition. Meanwhile, more attentional resources (reflected in a greater P300 amplitude) were directed toward processing the feedback outcomes in the low rather than the high social crowding condition.

Conclusion

The current study provided neurophysiological response that social crowding negatively influences consumers' online purchase intention. Some implications for theory and practice were also discussed.