Emotional Context, Learning, and Decision-Making: Associations with Mental Health and Personality in Nulliparous and Pregnant Women from a UK Birth Cohort

BackgroundParental capacity to learn from dynamic infant responses is a fundamental component of early dyadic interactions. However, the precise cognitive processes involved in successful interactions are not clear. If understood these could be targeted by preventative interventions.MethodsWe examined the computational basis of learning and decision-making in nulliparous (Study 1) and pregnant participants enrolled in a multigenerational cohort study (Study 2) using a two-armed bandit task adapted to simulate a playful interaction with an infant. Participants chose between two competing bandits (i.e., two toys) with different underlying nominal probabilities for three outcomes (i.e., infant sad, neutral, and happy facial expressions). In Study 1, we manipulated the baseline emotional context of the task (i.e., baby started happy or sad) to assess its influence on the processing of emotional feedback and decision-making in a sample of non-parents. In both studies, we explored whether mental health and personalities difficulties associated with learning from feedback. ResultsThe manipulation of the emotional context (Study 1) was associated with differences in how participants learnt from the feedback and made decisions. Both studies suggest that having greater personality difficulties and experiencing higher antenatal depressive symptoms (Study 2) associate with slower learning from infant feedback. ConclusionsOur findings provide novel evidence regarding the role of the emotional context in learning and decision-making processes. For parents with depressive symptoms and personality difficulties, dampened responsivity to emotional feedback and inflexibility in updating beliefs about the values of actions may underlie fewer sensitive behaviours when interacting with their infants.