Externalizing psychopathology and behavioral disinhibition: Working memory mediates signal discriminability and reinforcement moderates response bias in approach–avoidance learning.

The article I chose was about learning and memory. The article was related to chapter 14. The article stated that “reduced working memory capacity plays a key role in disinhibited patterns of behavior associated with externalizing psychopathology”.  The researchers chose a cross-sectional design and there were 365 participants in this study. There was an almost even distribution of males and females, but the majority of participants fell into the race of Caucasian. The average age was 21. 87 making participants fall into the group of young adults. Participants completed two versions of a go/no-go mixed-incentive learning task. This learning task differed in the relative frequency of monetary rewards and punishments when the correct and incorrect active-approach responses were given, respectively. Distinct roles for working memory capacity and changes in payoff structure were found. Results from the data showed that working memory capacity mediated the effects of externalizing psychopathology on false alarms, as well as discriminability of go versus no-go signals. Researchers also found that these effects were not moderated by the relative frequency of monetary rewards and punishments. Data supported the idea that reducing working memory capacity is likely to be responsible for the relationship between EXT and behavior disinhibition.

Endres, M. J., Rickert, M. E., Bogg, T., Lucas, J., & Finn, P. R. (2011). Externalizing psychopathology and behavioral disinhibition: Working memory mediates signal discriminability and reinforcement moderates response bias in approach–avoidance learning. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 120(2), 336-351. doi:10.1037/a0022501