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Project

Should I stay or should I go? The exploration-exploitation dilemma in pain.

Daily life is full of decisions. From choosing what to eat for dinner, to considering a new job offer, individuals have to choose between doing something they have done before, or explore new options. This so-called exploration-exploitation dilemma underlines two behavioral options (Cohen, et al. 2007). Exploration is about collecting new information with the opportunity to improve the current situation, but with the risk to also worsen it. Exploitation is about maintaining the current status, but with the potential risk to miss out on opportunities for improvement. Adaptive behavior is thought to be characterized by a balancing between this exploration-exploitation trade-off. How individuals solve this exploration-exploitation dilemma is a topic of interest in artificial intelligence (Cai, Liao, Carin, 2009), neuroscience (Aston-Jones, Cohen, 2005; Cohen, et al., 2007), organizational and health economics (Adler, et al., 2007). However, the vast majority of the literature has focused on studying this dilemma in approach behaviors, where participants have to decide between different rewarding stimuli. In the current project, we aim to extend this decision- making research to aversive environments, and pain in particular. In pain situations, individuals have to also balance their decisions between exploration and exploitation. Pain is highly threatening, and often results in a conflict between keeping pain at a manageable level and engaging in daily activities (e.g., running; Crombez, et al., 2008). Indeed, the option to manage pain often consists of avoiding these activities (Boudreaux, et al., 2012). Individuals in pain also often show an exploitation response by choosing the action leading to the least pain (pain avoidance), instead of exploring other valued activities that may help extinguish avoidance and may even help keeping pain under control. Although this avoidant response is considered adaptive when dealing with imminent threat, persistent avoidance is maladaptive (Barlow, 2002). Despite its potential detrimental impact on daily functioning, avoidance behavior only recently has seen a resurrection of interests, yet the processes involved in the acquisition, maintenance, and extinction of avoidance behavior remain poorly understood (Krypotos et al., 2015; Volders, et al., 2015). Based on this background, the present project has the following goals. First, we aim to validate an experimental paradigm in which exploration-exploitation dilemma where painful stimuli and rewards are included. Second, we aim to examine the basic computation parameters that best model exploration-exploitation dilemma. Then, we are going to test whether exploration-exploitation behavior is modulated by changes in the contingencies between each movement and the presentation of the painful stimulus/rewards. The next goal is to test whether exploration-exploitation behavior changes as part of context changes. Lastly, for all our experiments, we will evaluate though self-reports a range of relevant individual behavioral (e.g., inhibition and intolerance of uncertainty).

Date:11 Mar 2020 →  11 Mar 2024
Keywords:Exploration-Exploitation, Computational modeling, Pain, Avoidance
Disciplines:Health psychology
Project type:PhD project