TY - JOUR PY - 2020// TI - Diagnostic and dimensional evaluation of implicit reward learning in social anxiety disorder and major depression JO - Depression and anxiety A1 - Reilly, Erin E. A1 - Whitton, Alexis E. A1 - Pizzagalli, Diego A. A1 - Rutherford, Ashleigh V. A1 - Stein, Murray B. A1 - Paulus, Martin P. A1 - Taylor, Charles T. SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - OBJECTIVE: Increasing evidence supports the presence of an anhedonic endophenotype in major depressive disorder (MDD), characterized by impairments in various components of reward processing, particularly incentive motivation, effort-based decision making, and reward learning. In addition to its prominent role in MDD, reward processing dysregulation has been proposed as a transdiagnostic risk and/or maintenance factor for a range of other forms of psychopathology. Individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD)-a condition that frequently co-occurs with MDD-demonstrate low trait positive affectivity and altered processing of rewards and positively valenced information. However, no studies to date have directly tested reward learning-the ability to modulate behavior in response to rewards-in this population. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The current study evaluated reward learning in MDD, SAD, and healthy control subjects (N = 90) using a well-validated signal detection task. Given increasing data supporting transdiagnostic features of psychopathology, we also evaluated associations between anhedonia and task performance transdiagnostically in the patient sample. RESULTS: Contrary to expectations, results indicated no significant group differences in response bias in the full sample, suggesting no diagnostic differences in reward learning. However, dimensional analyses revealed that higher self-reported anhedonia (but not general distress or anxious arousal) was associated with worse reward learning in both the MDD and SAD groups explaining about 11% of the variance. CONCLUSION: Deficits in implicit reward learning are associated with anhedonia but not necessarily with major depressive disorder as a diagnosis, which supports the use of transdiagnostic approaches to understanding psychopathology.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1091-4269 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/da.23081 ID - ref1 ER -