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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

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Properties5
StatusProposed
Tagspsychopathology-and-treatment, learning-and-conditioning, emotion-and-affect
SourceLIT-1483 — The influence of anxiety on exploration: A review of computational modeling studies
ExtendsTHEORY-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
Bears onQUESTION-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?

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Source

Chou, Wilson & Smith (preprint June 2024; NBR 2024), LIT-1483, read in full from the PsyArXiv preprint in NOTE-1127. The primary studies were not read. The authors’ hedged reading of about eight bandit studies is THEORY-917, which this entry extends.

The claim

The review proposes that the direction of the relation between anxiety and directed exploration depends on the facet of anxiety: “many results could be seen to suggest that trait/cognitive anxiety measures promote exploration, while state/somatic anxiety deters exploration. However, findings are mixed” (p. 18). Its summary puts it as trait or cognitive anxiety that “may” increase, and somatic or state anxiety that may decrease, directed exploration (pp. 28–29). NOTE-1127 records it as claim C1, weak to moderate: mixed results, different tasks and measures, no replication.

This entry states the pattern as a tendency of bandit tasks generally, which is the review’s suggestion taken as its conclusion. It says nothing about random exploration, and nothing about exploration under threat.

What would settle it

The promote_when, carried from THEORY-917 unchanged: the same participants doing more than one exploration task, with every facet of anxiety measured by the same instruments, replicated in a second sample. QUESTION-330 asks the same. The promote_when also asks that random exploration be unrelated, a condition kept from the old wording; this entry does not assert it.

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