nucleation

QUESTION-330: How does anxiety change exploration across tasks and facets: does it reduce foraging exploration once stress and effort cost are controlled, does somatic anxiety reduce checking for threat through aversion to detecting it rather than a lower value placed on the information, and, in the same participants across more than one bandit task, does directed exploration rise with trait or cognitive anxiety and fall with state or somatic anxiety?

2 min read

Properties4
StatusOpen
Tagspsychopathology-and-treatment, learning-and-conditioning, emotion-and-affect
Linewill-organization
Cited as “bears on” byTHEORY-1180 — In foraging tasks, higher stress or anxiety goes consistently with less exploration, and in one task with a predator to check for, people higher in somatic anxiety checked less and did worse, a reduction associated with greater aversion to detecting the predator, THEORY-1186 — Across computational studies of exploration in reward-based bandit tasks, mostly in sub-clinical samples and not yet replicated, directed exploration tends to rise with trait or cognitive anxiety and to fall with state or somatic anxiety, THEORY-907 — As Chou, Wilson and Smith review them, in about six foraging studies, mostly sub-clinical, higher stress or anxiety went with less exploration, and in one task with a predator to check for (Trier et al. 2023), people higher in trait somatic anxiety checked less and did worse, a reduction the study's further analyses associated with greater aversion to detecting the predator, THEORY-917 — Chou, Wilson and Smith read about eight computational studies of exploration in reward-based bandit tasks, mostly in sub-clinical samples, with mixed results and none replicated, as suggesting that directed exploration rises with trait or cognitive anxiety and falls with state or somatic anxiety; none they review links random exploration to anxiety

Graph View

Why it is a question

THEORY-907 and THEORY-917 hold what the review reports, mostly from sub-clinical samples, single tasks and single anxiety measures, with stress and anxiety treated together and none of the main findings replicated.

What would answer it

The former promote_when of each, unchanged.

THEORY-907. For the foraging pattern: a replicated study with clinical as well as sub-clinical anxiety, in which less leaving of depleting patches is shown to come from anxiety rather than stress or effort cost, with the environment’s reward rate known. For the checking result: a replication of the predator-foraging finding, in which lower checking with somatic anxiety is shown, by modelling or manipulation, to come from aversion to detecting the threat rather than from lower valuation of the information. It is refuted if, with effort and stress controlled, anxiety does not reduce foraging exploration, or if anxious people check as much as others once the cost of detection is equated. Further correlational studies with a single anxiety measure cannot settle the mechanism.

THEORY-917. A study in which the same participants do more than one exploration task (a Horizon Task and a restless or two-armed bandit at least), with state, trait, somatic and cognitive anxiety measured by the same instruments, and preferably including clinical anxiety, showing directed exploration rising with trait or cognitive anxiety and falling with state or somatic anxiety in each task, and random exploration unrelated; replicated in a second sample. It is refuted if, in such a study, the facets do not differ in direction, or if the directions reverse between tasks. Further single studies with one task and one measure cannot settle it.

Backlinks