Trait individual difference of reinforcement-based decision criterial learning during episodic recognition judgments

Abstract

Although it is known that there are personality characteristic variances in the sensitivity to environmental feedback, the trait individual difference has scarcely been explored in the context of recognition memory decision. The present study investigated this issue by examining the relationship between the feedback-based adaptive flexibility of recognition criterion positioning and personality differences in general sensitivity to non-laboratory outcomes. Experiment 1 demonstrated that veridical feedback itself had little effect on the recognition decision criterion whereas Experiment 2 demonstrated that biased feedback manipulations selectively restricted to high confidence errors, induced shifts even in the overall Old/New category criterion. Critically, individual differences in stable personality characteristic linked to reward seeking(Behavioral Activation System-BAS) and anxiety avoidance (Behavioral Inhibition System-BIS) has been shown to predict the sensitivity of subjects to this form of feedback-induced criterion learning. This data further support the idea that incremental reinforcement-based learning mechanism not often considered important during explicit recognition decisions may play a key role in criterion setting.