Instrumental learning in social interactions: Trait learning from faces and voices

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Social learning

Background:

• Reinforcement learning (RL) is implicated in social trait formation from faces.
• The role of RL in learning social traits from auditory cues remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if RL mechanisms used for facial trait learning apply to auditory (voice) stimuli.
• To compare learning of reward value and generosity from auditory versus visual targets.

Main Methods:

• Participants (N=192) completed a task involving choices between targets (human/slot machine) with varying reward values and payout generosity.
• Targets were presented as auditory (voices/tones) or visual (faces/icons) stimuli with sequential feedback.
• Choice behavior and target preference ratings were measured.

Main Results:

• Auditory targets showed reward effects on choices but not preference, with higher preferences for generous targets.
• Visual targets replicated prior findings: learning of reward and generosity, with priority for human generosity.
• Auditory stimuli altered learning compared to visual stimuli in this RL paradigm.

Conclusions:

• Demonstrates RL of reward with auditory stimuli in a social learning context.
• Auditory cues influence social learning differently than visual cues.
• RL of reward and trait information from visual stimuli is robust to delayed feedback.