Inspired by XKCD comics’ Thing Explainer, we are now posting descriptions of our new publications as they come out using the 1000 most commonly used English words (http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/). We find it not only clears out the jargon to help non-experts understand our research, it helps us understand our research better too.
Ehlers, M. R. & Todd, R. M. (2017) Acute psychophysiological stress impairs human associative learning. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.
Events that cause a problem (make people worry or want to find some way out) can make us (1) more easily reminded of good things that made us feel good in the past, and (2) want do things that have gotten us good things in the past–even things that feel good at first but are bad for us in the long run. We know that this is the case for things that people have already learned can get them something good, but we don’t know what happens when people face events that make them worry and want to run away/give up before learning a new thing they can do to get something good. To figure this out, we asked people to sit at a computer and try to win some money (the new thing they can do to get something good). Before starting the game, everybody answered some questions and gave us some body water so we could tell how much they were worrying and wanting to run away or give up. Then, half of the people who played put their hand in ice-cold water for three minutes while somebody else watched them and wrote down what they did. This was done to make them feel worried and want to run away or give up. The other half put their hands in warm water and nobody watched them so they did not feel worried. After some time, everyone did the questions and body water thing again to tell us how much they felt worried and wanted to give up/run away.
Next, they played two kinds of games: For the first game everyone had to learn to press a stick as hard as they could to win money. When they pressed hard enough, they got money–and over time they could figure out just how hard they had to press to make sure they got the money. As it turns out, people who had a worrying event before playing did not press as hard get the money than those who did not. This might mean that when people have just faced an event that made them feel worried and want to run away/give up, they will probably give up on doing something that they just learned would bring them a good thing. This was also true when people were offered even more money — even though more money made people work harder than less money.
For the second game, every time people saw one picture they were given some money. When they saw a different picture they were not given any money. Every time they saw a picture they had to press a key but pressing the key did not have anything to do with whether they got money. Everybody learned which picture meant they would get money, but people who had had the worrying event slowed down in pressing the key for the good picture. This shows that when something happens that makes you worry or want to run a way, a little while after you probably will not do the things you have just learned will give you good things, as if when worry happens you don’t know how to use new things you have learned to do good things for yourself.
