Reward processing in young people with self-harm behaviour

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Public Health

Background:

• Self-harm (SH) affects 20% of young people, linked to poor health outcomes.
• Cognitive mechanisms of SH are poorly understood, hindering early intervention development.
• Reward processing biases are hypothesized to contribute to SH, potentially due to "addictive" qualities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate reward processing biases in young people with a history of self-harm (SH).
• To examine the relationship between self-harm, negative affect (NA), and cognitive performance on an Incentive Delay Task (IDT).
• To test hypotheses regarding faster and more accurate responses in SH groups on SH-related stimuli.

Main Methods:

• Two studies compared young people with SH to healthy controls (HC) and individuals with negative affect (NA) but no SH history.
• Participants completed a novel Incentive Delay Task (IDT) using self-harm, social, or monetary images.
• Study 2 involved NA induction using the Trier Social Stress Test before the IDT.

Main Results:

• No significant differences in IDT performance were found between SH and control groups across all trial types (SH, social, money).
• Contrary to hypotheses, SH participants did not show enhanced performance on SH-related cues.
• Specific SH characteristics (positive reinforcement, imagery, urge) correlated with better SH trial performance in the SH group.

Conclusions:

• Broadly, self-harm behavior may not be driven by motivational biases toward SH cues or natural rewards.
• Individual differences in SH may be better explained by the incentivization of SH-related cues.
• Future research should explore the role of cue incentivization in SH behavior, treatment, and prognosis.