Slow Is Also Fast: Feedback Delay Affects Anxiety and Outcome Evaluation

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychophysiology

Background:

• Performance feedback is crucial for adaptive behavior.
• Reward positivity (RewP) is an event-related potential (ERP) component linked to outcome evaluation, sensitive to feedback timing.
• Anxiety traits can influence threat detection, emotional processing, and neural activity during outcome evaluation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural processing of delayed feedback in individuals with varying trait anxiety levels.
• To examine how feedback delay interacts with trait anxiety in the context of reinforcement learning.

Main Methods:

• Recruited participants with low (LTA) and high (HTA) trait anxiety.
• Recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during a time-estimation task with short (0.6-1s) and long (4-5s) feedback delays.
• Analyzed ERP components including feedback-related negativity (FRN) and reward positivity (RewP).

Main Results:

• High trait anxiety (HTA) group showed a more negative-going feedback-related negativity (FRN)-like component to long-delay cues compared to short-delay cues.
• Low trait anxiety (LTA) group exhibited a more positive-going reward positivity (RewP) for short-delayed feedback than long-delayed feedback.
• No significant difference in RewP was observed between short and long delays in the HTA group.

Conclusions:

• Delayed feedback processing differs between individuals with low and high trait anxiety.
• High trait anxiety may be associated with hyperactive reward system responses in uncertain (long-delay) environments.
• Findings offer insights into the neural mechanisms of reinforcement learning and anxiety.