Study basic learning processes in stress-exposed youth to guide targeted prevention and intervention¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 6 claims (6 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 6 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The authors recommend that future research investigate how impaired learning mechanisms impact social development and how understanding these processes "can be used to guide the development of targeted prevention and intervention programs for high-risk youth". They argue that studying basic learning processes in stress-exposed youth will generate knowledge about how stress affects brain development and behavior and in turn produce interventions ameliorating the downstream consequences of adverse early environments.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Assessment of instrumental learning and cognitive flexibility in high-risk youth populations

Constraints¶

• Interventions are proposed as future directions; the article did not test any intervention

Target Learners¶

• children and adolescents exposed to early life stress

Target Learning Goals¶

• basic associative learning
• cognitive flexibility

Affordances¶

• General Learning Mechanism Early Stress Account

Claims¶

• ACC activation to reward during reversal is positively associated with reversal learning performance in stress-exposed adolescents [+W]
• Stress-exposed adolescents show abnormal neural activation in learning- and attention-related regions [+W]
• Stress-exposed adolescents show impaired cognitive flexibility in reversal learning [+W]
• Stress-exposed adolescents fail to follow the optimal exploratory strategy of initial indiscriminate responding [+W]
• Stress-exposed adolescents learn reward-punishment associations more slowly than controls during acquisition [+W]
• Lifetime stress severity correlates with poorer learning performance and reduced putamen/ACC activation [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Inform educators and clinicians about acute effects of negative life events on self-control and offer interventions to affected children

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Harms Madeline B., Shannon-Bowen Katherine E., Hanson Jamie L., Pollak Seth D. (2018). Instrumental Learning and Cognitive Flexibility Processes are Impaired in Children Exposed to Early Life Stress. Developmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12596