Many psychotherapies aim to help people replace maladaptive mental behaviors (such as those leading to unproductive worry) with more adaptive ones (such as those leading to active problem solving). Yet, little is known empirically about how challenging it is to learn adaptive mental behaviors. Mental behaviors entail taking mental operations and thus may be more challenging to perform than motor actions; this challenge may enhance or impair learning. In particular, challenge when learning is often desirable because it improves retention. Yet, it is also plausible that the necessity of carrying out mental operations interferes with learning the expected values of mental actions by impeding credit assignment: the process of updating an action's value after reinforcement. Then, it may be more challenging not only to perform-but also to learn the consequences of-mental (vs. motor) behaviors. We designed a task to assess learning to take adaptive mental versus motor actions via matched probabilistic feedback. In two experiments (N = 300), most participants found it more difficult to learn to select optimal mental (vs. motor) actions, as evident in worse accuracy not only in a learning but also test (retention) phase. Computational modeling traced this impairment to an indicator of worse credit assignment (impaired construction and maintenance of expected values) when learning mental actions, accounting for worse accuracy in the learning and retention phases. The results suggest that people have particular difficulty learning adaptive mental behavior and pave the way for novel interventions to scaffold credit assignment and promote adaptive thinking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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学习适应性心理行为的挑战。


许多心理治疗旨在帮助人们用适应性更强的心理行为（例如导致积极解决问题的行为）取代适应不良的心理行为（例如导致无益忧虑的行为）。然而，人们对学习适应性心理行为的挑战性却知之甚少。心理行为需要进行心理操作，因此可能比运动行为更具挑战性；这一挑战可能会增强或削弱学习。特别是，学习时的挑战往往是可取的，因为它可以提高记忆力。然而，进行心理操作的必要性也可能通过阻碍信用分配（强化后更新行为价值的过程）来干扰学习心理行为的预期价值。然后，不仅执行心理（相对于运动）行为，而且了解心理（与运动）行为的后果，都可能更具挑战性。我们设计了一项任务，通过匹配的概率反馈来评估学习采取适应性心理动作与运动动作的情况。在两项实验（N = 300）中，大多数参与者发现学习选择最佳心理（相对于运动）动作更加困难，这不仅在学习阶段而且在测试（保留）阶段的准确性较差，这一点很明显。计算模型将这种损害追溯到学习心理行为时信用分配较差的指标（预期值的构建和维护受损），从而导致学习和保留阶段的准确性较差。结果表明，人们在学习适应性心理行为方面特别困难，这为支持学分分配和促进适应性思维的新颖干预措施铺平了道路。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。