Social Incentives Improve Deliberative But Not Automatic Learning in Older Adults

Age-related deficits are seen across tasks where learning depends on asocial feedback processing, however plasticity has been observed in some of the same tasks in social contexts suggesting a novel way to attenuate deficits. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests this plasticity is due to a deliberative motivational shift toward achieving wellbeing with age (positivity effect) that reverses when executive processes are limited (negativity effect). The present study examined the interaction of feedback valence (positive, negative) and social salience (emotional face feedback – happy; angry, asocial point feedback – gain; loss) on learning in a deliberative task that challenges executive processes and a procedural task that does not. We predict that angry face feedback will improve learning in a deliberative task when executive function is challenged. We tested two competing hypotheses regarding the interactive effects of deliberative emotional biases on automatic feedback processing: 1) If deliberative emotion regulation and automatic feedback are interactive we expect happy face feedback to improve learning and angry face feedback to impair learning in older adults because cognitive control is available. 2) If deliberative emotion regulation and automatic feedback are not interactive we predict that emotional face feedback will not improve procedural learning regardless of valence. Results demonstrate that older adults show persistent deficits relative to younger adults during procedural category learning suggesting that deliberative emotional biases do not interact with automatic feedback processing. Interestingly, a subgroup of older adults identified as potentially using deliberative strategies tended to learn as well as younger adults with angry relative to happy feedback, matching the pattern observed in the deliberative task. Results suggest that deliberative emotional biases can improve deliberative learning, but have no effect on automatic learning.