Schedule of Events | Symposia

Assessing Aging and Psychological Effects on Habitual Behavior Using a Novel Outcome Revaluation Task

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Corinna Franco¹ (corfran001@g.ucla.edu), Barbara Knowlton¹; ¹Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles

Aging is frequently accompanied by neurocognitive changes which may impact an individual’s quality of life. However, aging effects on the tendency for habitual behavioral control have not been extensively investigated. To assess these relationships, 159 adults across the lifespan (46.1 ± 17.7 years old, range = 19 - 80) completed a novel instrumental outcome revaluation task, where participants made keyboard responses to abstract stimuli to gain digital currency before completing a revaluation test where the outcome of one stimulus was negatively altered while the other retained its value. Habitual responding was measured as the proportion of responses made to revalued stimuli. Participants also provided self-report measures of psychological variables, including obsessive-compulsive behaviors and early life stress exposure. Linear regression analyses showed no effect of age on proportion of habit responses (p = 0.379). However, significant positive effects of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (b = 0.004, p = 0.002) and early life physical abuse (b = 0.015, p = 0.031) on increased proportion habit responses were observed. In contrast, depressive symptoms were associated with a decrease in habit responses (b = -0.008, p = 0.007). Additional analyses revealed no significant effect of age on initial learning accuracy (p = 0.501) but showed a significant negative effect of age on responding to the unaltered stimulus at test (b = -0.013, p = 0.024). These results support previous work showing that obsessive-compulsive symptoms and a history of early life stress are associated with increased habitual responding and that habit learning is stable across the lifespan.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Skill Learning