604411

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JIVXXX10.1177/0886260515604411Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceLenow et al.

Article
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
2018, Vol. 33(1) 159­–179
Altered Trust Learning © The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0886260515604411
https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260515604411
Female Adolescent journals.sagepub.com/home/jiv

Victims of Interpersonal
Violence

Jennifer Lenow,1 Joshua Cisler,2 and Keith Bush3

Abstract
Early-life interpersonal violence (IV) is a significant risk factor for a broad range
of mental health disorders, increased rates of re-victimization, and psychosocial
dysfunction. However, the cognitive mechanisms by which these risks are
conferred are largely unknown. The current study attempted to address this
empirical gap. Thirty-two adolescent girls, aged 12 to 16 (15 victims of IV),
completed a social learning task. A computational learning model was fit to
the behavioral data (ratings of trustworthiness during the learning task) to test
for group differences in the cognitive mechanisms by which adolescent girls
learn to differentially trust others. Specifically, we tested for differences in task
performance and subject-level learning parameters: learning rate (the extent
to which preferences are updated with new information) and preference
stochasticity (the extent to which preferences seem random). Adolescent
girls who were victims of IV demonstrated significantly worse performance
than their control counterparts. Among IV victims, we observed a relationship
between higher learning rates and greater preference stochasticity. Theoretical
and clinical implications are discussed.

Keywords
childhood trauma, learning, decision making

1New York University, New York City, USA

2University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA
3University of Arkansas at Little Rock, AR, USA

Corresponding Author:
Jennifer Lenow, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA.
Email: jklenow@nyu.edu
160 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33(1)

Epidemiological evidence demonstrates that victims of interpersonal vio-

lence (IV), or direct physical or sexual assault and/or abuse, are at greater risk
for developing psychopathology (e.g., anxiety, mood, and substance use dis-
orders) and for experiencing subsequent victimization (Acierno, Resnick,
Kilpatrick, Saunders, & Best, 1999; Kilpatrick et al., 2003). The risks associ-
ated with IV are even higher among victims who are female and were
assaulted at an early age (Breslau & Anthony, 2007; Mehta et al., 2013).
Studies using national epidemiological samples have shown that rates of IV
among adolescents range from 42% to 47% (Boney-McCoy & Finkelhor,
1995; Kilpatrick et al., 2000) and that, among adolescents, exposure to IV—
as opposed to other types of trauma—confers greater vulnerability to psycho-
pathology and other clinically relevant behavioral and health sequelae (Cisler
et al., 2012). Despite the overwhelming evidence establishing IV exposure as
a critical factor in moderating deleterious behavioral and mental health out-
comes, especially among female adolescents, scarce is known about the cog-
nitive or biological mechanisms by which these risks are conferred.
A small but growing body of data suggests that exposure to IV among
female victims is associated with alterations in cognitive processes associ-
ated with social decision making. One study, which used written descriptions
of social situations to assess judgments of sexual victimization risk, found
that greater histories of IV among young women were associated with higher
thresholds for judging a situation as risky (Yeater, Treat, Viken, & McFall,
2010). These researchers also reported that women with histories of IV dem-
onstrate less response effectiveness (Yeater, McFall, & Viken, 2011) and less
response refusal in sexually risky situations (Yeater et al., 2011; Yeater &
Viken, 2010). Another study found that the latency with which victimized
women decided to leave hypothetical, risky social situations escalating
toward rape significantly predicted subsequent re-victimization (Brown,
Messman-Moore, Miller, & Stasser, 2005; Messman-Moore & Brown, 2006).
Although such correlative evidence cannot disambiguate whether the
observed differences in decision making are a cause, effect, or merely corre-
late of IV, these data nonetheless support an initial framework for understand-
ing how IV might be associated with a heightened risk for re-victimization
and other negative psychosocial outcomes. Specifically, we hypothesize that
these risks might in part be conferred through alterations in the mechanisms
by which victims learn about and interact with their social environments.
Here, we use a computational modeling approach to characterize cognitive
learning mechanisms, in the service of testing our hypothesis that female IV
victims will demonstrate differences in the cognitive mechanisms by which
they learn and make decisions about conspecifics. Computational models of
learning and decision making mathematically formalize psychological
Lenow et al. 161

theories of learning or decision making, yielding quantitatively precise and

logically consistent predictions that can then be empirically tested to deter-
mine how well these theories explain behavioral phenomena of interest (e.g.,
choices, reaction times). The Rescorla–Wagner (RW) model, perhaps the most
influential theory of associative learning, models the process by which ani-
mals can, over time, learn to associate a stimulus (e.g., a light) with some
biologically relevant outcome (e.g., a food reward) through making trial-by-
trial predictions and incrementally adjusting those predictions based on new,
incoming information (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). Associative learning can
perhaps also explain phenomena in the social domain, where, for instance,
certain people may over time become differentially associated with positive
or negative outcomes (and thus varying degrees of trustworthiness).
Reinforcement learning models, which adhere to a logical structure similar to
RW but are more flexible and explanatorily powerful, model not only the pro-
cess by which associative learning occurs (e.g., in the social domain, learning
which person is the most trustworthy) but also the process by which specific
actions (e.g., which person in which to engage trust) are selected based on
these learned associations. This approach thus allows for the testing of whether
IV is associated with alterations in the cognitive mechanisms by which sub-
jects learn about the trustworthiness of—and consequently how they decide to
interact with—conspecifics.
There are several lines of evidence that support the use of computational
accounts of learning and decision making to address how IV exposure might
confer social cognitive and affective risk. First, there is significant overlap
among the neural regions (e.g., prefrontal cortex, amygdala, insula) impli-
cated in psychiatric disorders (Bryant et al., 2008; Etkin, Prater, Hoeft,
Menon, & Schatzberg, 2010), learning and decision making (Behrens,
Woolrich, Walton, & Rushworth, 2007; Hartley & Phelps, 2012), and expo-
sure to IV and stress (Cisler, Steele, Smitherman, Lenow, & Kilts, 2013;
Lenow, Steele, Smitherman, Kilts, & Cisler, 2014; McEwen, Eiland, Hunter,
& Miller, 2012). Furthermore, the very psychiatric disorders to which IV
victims are predisposed, such as anxiety, mood, and substance use disorders,
have been broadly associated with aberrant learning and decision-making
processes (Barlow, Allen, & Choate, 2004; Hartley & Phelps, 2012). Finally,
as previously reviewed, female victims of IV have been found to demonstrate
impaired risky decision making in the social domain (DePrince, 2005; Gobin
& Freyd, 2009; Lenow et al., 2014; Yeater & Viken, 2010). These findings
converge to provide a foundation for the current study’s hypothesis: Direct
experience with IV is associated with deficits in learning and decision mak-
ing in the social domain. Because adolescence is characterized as a period of
marked neurological and cognitive flexibility (Blakemore & Robbins, 2012),
162 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33(1)

this relationship might be particularly potent when IV occurs during child-

hood or adolescence.
In the current study, we investigate the relationship between alterations in
social learning and decision making among adolescent girls who have been
exposed to IV, as compared with age- and gender-matched controls, leverag-
ing a computational learning approach (of a form similar to the RW model
described previously) to do so. Based on prior research demonstrating
decreased perceptions of risk in social situations and increased rates of re-
victimization among IV victims, we hypothesized that female adolescent IV
victims, as compared with non-IV-exposed female adolescents, would dem-
onstrate (a) overall diminished performance on a social learning task and (b)
alterations in the computationally modeled learning mechanisms. Specifically,
these learning mechanisms refer to the extent to which trust preferences are
updated with new information (i.e., learning rate) and the extent to which
trust preferences seem random or uncorrelated with previously learned trust
associations (i.e., preference stochasticity).

Method
Participants
Thirty-two study-eligible adolescent girls, aged 12 to 16, completed all study
procedures, to which they and their caregivers provided assent and consent,
respectively. Fifteen of these girls demonstrated a history of interpersonal vic-
timization (defined below), comprising our assaulted sample, whereas the
remaining 17 who did not have any history of IV victimization comprised our
control group. Participants were recruited from local trauma-specialty clinics,
general outpatient mental health clinics, community-wide advertising, and
newspaper ads. Exclusionary criteria for all participants were the presence of
a major medical conditions—ferromagnetic objects (e.g., braces), develop-
mental disorders, psychotic disorders—and the lack of a caregiver to provide
consent. Additional exclusion criteria for the control participants were inci-
dence of mental health disorders and current psychopharmacological treat-
ment. See Table 1 for demographic and clinical characteristics of the sample.

Assessments
IV exposure.  Assaultive trauma histories were characterized using the trauma
assessment section of the National Survey of Adolescents (NSA; Kilpatrick
et al., 2000; Kilpatrick et al., 2003), a structured interview used in prior epide-
miological studies of assault and mental health functioning among adolescents.
Lenow et al. 163

Table 1.  Demographic and Clinical Characteristics of the Sample.

p Value
Assaulted Non-Assaulted of Group t Value
Measure Girls (n = 15) Girls (n = 17) Difference (χ2)
Age 15.07 (1.10) 14.29 (1.21) .070 1.88
Ethnicity 60% Caucasian 52.9% Caucasian .637 1.68
  26.7% African 41.2% African  
American American
  6.7% Biracial 5.9% Biracial  
  6.7% Hispanic 0% Hispanic  
Direct assaults 3.67 (2.61) 0 (0) <.001 4.23
Age at first 7.27 (3.35) NA NA  
assault
Age at last assault 12.13 (2.97) NA NA  
Time since last 2.93 (3.06) NA NA  
assault
Current PTSD 20% 0% .053 3.74
Current MDD 13.3% 0% .120 2.4
UCLA PTSD 19.60 (19.69) 2.12 (5.67) .001 3.65
symptoms
SMF depressed 7.60 (6.74) 3.47 (3.13) .031 2.26
Verbal IQ 100.80 (11.01) 106.53 (19.39) .321 1.01

Note. For discrete measures, frequencies are listed; for continuous measures, means and
standard deviations are listed. MDD = Major Depressive Disorder; UCLA PTSD = University
of California at Los Angeles Post-traumatic Stress Disorder; SMF = Short Mood and Feelings.

Specific assaultive events were assessed with behaviorally specific dichoto-

mous questions and included (a) sexual assault (e.g., vaginal penetration or oral
sex on the perpetrator), (b) physical assault (e.g., attacked with a weapon), (c)
severe abuse from a caregiver (e.g., beaten with fists or an object to the point
where bruising or bleeding occurred), and (d) witnessed violence (e.g., wit-
nessing a violent beating at home or in community). Affirmative responses to a
trauma exposure were followed by detailed questions about specific character-
istics of the exposure, including how many times the trauma occurred, the age
at which that trauma type first happened, the age at which it last happened, who
was the perpetrator, whether there was physical injury or fear of physical
injury, etc. A trained female research coordinator with several years of experi-
ence with structured clinical interviews completed the NSA interviews with
participants under the supervision of a licensed clinical psychologist. Follow-
ing the prior literature (Cisler et al., 2011; Cisler et al., 2012; Kolassa, Kolassa,
Ertl, Papassotiropoulos, & De Quervain, 2010; Neuner et al., 2004), we defined
164 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33(1)

the frequency of assault exposure as the sum of the total number of types of
assault to which the participant was directly exposed. That is, during the NSA,
participants were asked about the presence of 17 unique types of directly expe-
rienced assault, and their total frequency was defined as the number of unique
types of direct assault to which they answered affirmatively.

Psychopathology.  Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia

(K-SADS; Kaufman et al., 1997) was used to assess participants’ past and
current mental health statuses. The K-SADS is a commonly used structured
clinical interview instrument that assesses the incidence and characteristics
of mood, psychotic, anxiety, behavioral, and substance use disorders accord-
ing to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-
IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria. The K-SADS has
established reliability and validity (Kaufman et al., 1997).

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Adolescents completed the

University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) PTSD Reaction Index-
Adolescent Report (Steinberg, Brymer, Decker, & Pynoos, 2004) as a con-
tinuous measure of the severity of DSM-IV PTSD symptoms. The UCLA
PTSD Index consists of 22 items assessing DSM-IV re-experiencing, avoid-
ance, and hyper-arousal symptoms of PTSD using a 5-point Likert-type scale
(never to almost every day). This index has established internal validity and
reliability (Steinberg et al., 2013). For the present analyses, we used a
summed PTSD symptom severity score from all DSM-IV symptom items.
The Cronbach’s alpha for the UCLA PTSD Index was .94.

Depression symptoms. Adolescents also completed the Short Mood and

Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ; Angold et al., 1995), which consists of
13 items assessing depression symptoms using a 3-point Likert-type
scale. This questionnaire has established internal and predictive validity
(Angold et al., 1995). Adolescents indicated to what extent a statement
(e.g., “I didn’t enjoy anything at all”) was true (e.g., “not true,” “some-
times,” or “true”) in the past 2 weeks. A total depression symptom sever-
ity score was created by summing all the items. The Cronbach’s alpha for
the SMFQ was .896.

Verbal IQ.  To test for potentially confounding differences in general cognitive

ability, adolescents were administered a brief verbal IQ test, the Receptive
One-Word Vocabulary Test (Brownell, 2000), which provides a norm-
referenced assessment of receptive vocabulary skills. This widely used test
has established validity and reliability (Brownell, 2000).
Lenow et al. 165

Social Learning Task

All participants engaged in an identical social contingency learning task in
which they rated the differential trustworthiness of three same-sex faces
based on the percentage of trials in which each face either gave or kept par-
ticipants’ money. The trial sequence (depicted in Figure 1) was as follows: (a)
the computer invested US$10 of the participant’s cache of money (initialized
at US$50) in one of three faces (counterbalanced across faces across all tri-
als), (b) the face either kept the US$10 or gave US$20 back to the participant,
and (c) the participant selected which of the three faces she found most
trustworthy.
For the first 48 trials of the task, Face 1 gave money back 80% of the time
(most trustworthy), Face 2 50% of the time (control), and Face 3 20% of the
time (least trustworthy). At the task’s midpoint, the Face 1 and Face 3 contin-
gencies reversed such that the least trustworthy face (Face 3) became the
most trustworthy and vice versa. After each observation (i.e., trial), partici-
pants were asked to indicate which face they believed was the most trustwor-
thy. There are two notable differences between this novel learning task and
canonical reinforcement learning tasks. First, the delivery of outcomes was
not stochastic (i.e., the outcomes were predetermined by the experimenters
and identical across all participants); second, participants did not actively
choose in which face to invest money (i.e., investments were predetermined
by the experimenters). We chose this design to maximize experimental con-
trol of the task manipulation across subjects such that all participants would
observe exactly the same sequence of events, reducing inter-subject variance
(i.e., noise) and allowing for direct comparisons between groups. Specifically,
it was important that the groups were presented with equivalent observational
experiences so that we could test whether and how the groups differentially
learned from those identical experiences. Although the current study’s pas-
sive, observational learning paradigm was not specifically designed accord-
ing to a reinforcement learning model of active, self-directed learning,
observational learning has been shown to be analogous to self-directed learn-
ing, relying on the same computations (e.g., prediction errors) and neural
mechanisms (e.g., the striatum; Cooper, Dunne, Furey, & O’Doherty, 2012).

Computational Modeling
To model this learning-by-observation task as a reinforcement learning task
(which requires action selections), trustworthy ratings (i.e., trial-by-trial
responses indicating which of the three faces the participant trusted most)
were used to infer which face the participant would have chosen to invest
166 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33(1)

Figure 1.  Example trial sequences resulting in (a) a negative outcome in which
Face 3 retains the participant’s investment of money and (b) a positive outcome in
which Face 2 returns double the amount of the participant’s investment.

money in during the successive trial. That is, we inferred that the face the
participant selected as the most trustworthy in trial t would be the face in
which the participant would have invested money in trial t + 1.

Trustworthiness model.  We modeled each participant’s understanding of the

experiment’s rules as an expectation of trustworthiness for each “face”
encountered. We did this by simplifying the trial-by-trial outcomes from that
of monetary investment and payoff to one of binary positive and negative
outcomes. On each trial, t, a face, it, is selected and an outcome, rt, is observed.
A positive outcome, r = 1, occurs when a US$10 investment yields a US$20
payoff. A negative outcome, r = 0, occurs when the payoff is US$0. Trans-
formed to this domain, expected trustworthiness is equivalent to the esti-
mated probability of observing a positive outcome when the ith face is
selected on trial t, denoted p(rt = 1|it) = θi,t.
Lenow et al. 167

We model a participant’s expectation of trustworthiness during the experi-

ment via the RW (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972; Rushworth & Behrens, 2008)
model of reinforcement learning,

θi ,t +1 = θi ,t + α ( rt − θi ,t ) ,

where rt is the outcome of trial t and alpha is the participant’s learning rate
(on the range [0,1]). This learning rate is a participant-specific quantity that
models the degree to which the most recent observation influences the par-
ticipant’s future expectations of trustworthiness. For example, α = 1.0 would
indicate that the participant’s expectation of trustworthiness is wholly
formed by the most recent observation; likewise, α = 0.0 would indicate that
the participant’s expectation of trustworthiness cannot change via observa-
tion. For all participants, we assume that there is no initial bias among the
faces or between positive and negative outcomes. Therefore, θi,0 = .5 for all
faces, i in [1,2,3].

Face selection model.  For each trial, each participant selected a face as the
most trustworthy, which we denote as it*. We model this selection process as
a probability distribution given by the softmax activation function,
exp(θi* ,t / τ)
p (it* ) = ,
∑ exp(θ
i
i* , t / τ)

where tau is a participant-specific quantity on the range (0, infinity) that mod-
els the degree to which differential expected trustworthiness determines the
participant’s face selection. As the value of tau approaches 0, the participant’s
choice reflects a decision process in which the face yielding the maximum
expected trustworthiness is preferred (i.e., the maximum); likewise, as the
value of tau approaches infinity, the participant’s choice reflects a random
decision. In reinforcement learning, maximization of value over time requires
an optimal balance between identifying novel knowledge (exploration) and
leveraging old knowledge (exploitation; Daw, O’Doherty, Dayan, Seymour,
& Dolan, 2006). In this model, the tau parameter represents the exploration–
exploitation balance struck by the participant. We refer to this quantity hence-
forth as “preference stochasticity” insofar as it represents the extent to which
preferences vary, independent of previously learned information about the
conspecifics’ differential trustworthiness.

Participant model optimization.  Given the true participant observations, rt, t in

1, . . . , N (N is the number of trials), the above trustworthiness and face
168 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33(1)

selection models yield trial-by-trial probability distribution estimates over

the participant’s choice of trustworthy faces for each pair of participant-
specific parameters, alpha and tau. We solved for each participant’s parame-
ters by grid search (Ahn, Buseymeyer, Wagenmakers, & Stout, 2008; Nelder
& Mead, 1965).

Estimating participant performance.  We estimate participant performance by

computing the sum of expected positive outcomes, E (V ) , that the participant
would observe if they controlled face selection during the experiment. We
compute this quantity by summing, over all trials and all faces, the product of
the probability of the participant selecting face, i, at trial, t (i.e., having accu-
mulated knowledge of the system through the first t observations), annotated,
p(it), with the true probability of a positive outcome for that face on that trial,
p(rt = 1 | it), which is determined by the experimental design, such that
T 3
E (V ) = ∑ ∑ p (i ) p ( r = 1 | i ).
t =1 i =1
t t t

Relationships with assault exposure.  We created two assault exposure variables

to test for effects of IV on the dependent variables: (a) a dichotomous IV vari-
able (defined as 0 = control and 1 = assaulted) to test for an effect of IV per
se (i.e., between-group differences) and (b) an ordinal IV frequency variable
that categorized participants into three different ordinal levels of assault fre-
quency according to the number of different assaultive events to which the
individuals were directly exposed (defined as 0 = control, 1 = 1-2 assaults, 2
= 3 or more assaults). This frequency-based definition of assault is consistent
with prior studies examining trauma severity (Kolassa, Ertl, et al., 2010; Kol-
assa, Kolassa, et al., 2010; Lenow et al., 2014). Using robust regression, we
regressed performance (i.e., total number of optimal decisions) onto these IV
variables (Wager, Keller, Lacey, & Jonides, 2005). As described below, there
was stronger evidence that assault exposure frequency, rather than IV per se,
was related to modeled performance; thus, we then tested whether the com-
putational model parameters (i.e., learning rate, preference stochasticity, and
their interaction) were related to assault frequency within a multiple robust
regression analysis.

Relationships with clinical symptoms among assaulted adolescents.  Because there

were between-group differences in variables other than assault exposure
(e.g., symptoms of PTSD) due to the clinical heterogeneity of the assaulted
sample, we performed a series of robust regressions within the assaulted sam-
ple to determine whether any between-group differences in depression or
Lenow et al. 169

PTSD symptoms would be related to any of the computational modeling

parameters.

Results
Computational Modeling
Our model of participant behavior assumes that participants are well mod-
eled by two parameters, a learning rate (alpha, reflecting how quickly par-
ticipants change their trust expectations based on recent observations) and
preference stochasticity (tau, reflecting randomness in trustworthy ratings).
We validated the utility of these parameters in explaining our data by com-
paring models of participant behavior that incrementally increase complex-
ity (Figure 2). We then tested the relationship between modeled performance
and modeling parameters with robust regression analyses, in which perfor-
mance is regressed simultaneously onto learning rate, preference stochastic-
ity, and the interaction of learning rate × preference stochasticity (all
variables z scored prior to both the analyses and the computation of the
interaction term). Suggesting internal validity of the modeling approach, we
observed strong relationships between modeled performance and learning
rate, t = 7.70, p < .0001; preference stochasticity, t = −5.54, p < .0001; and
the interaction, t = −7.36, p < .0001.

Relationship Between Assault Exposure and Model Parameters

We observed significantly lower performance among assaulted girls com-
pared with control girls, t = −2.72, p = .011. We also observed a significant
negative linear relationship between assault exposure frequency and task per-
formance, t = −4.65, p = .0001 (Figure 3). Given the strong relationship
between performance and assault frequency, we then tested the relationship
between assault frequency and the modeling parameters with robust regres-
sion analyses, in which assault frequency was regressed simultaneously onto
learning rate, preference stochasticity, and the interaction of learning rate ×
preference stochasticity (all variables z scored prior to analyses and computa-
tion of the interaction term). This analysis revealed a trend for a marginally
significant negative relationship between assault frequency and learning rate,
t = −2.03, p = .052, and significant relationships between assault frequency
and preference stochasticity, t = 2.65, p = .013, and the interaction between
learning rate and preference stochasticity, t = 3.18, p = .0036. Indicating the
direction of this interaction, we observed that at high levels (.5 SD above the
mean) of preference stochasticity, learning rate was significantly positively
170 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33(1)

Figure 2.  Boxplot of modeling performance outcomes across the three models is
tested.
Note. A boxplot distribution is composed of a bisected box formed by horizontal lines
indicating the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of the distribution (McGill, Tukey, & Larsen,
1978). Triangular notches centered about the 50th percentile line depict the 95% confidence
interval of the median value; therefore, non-overlapping notches between different boxes
indicate a statistically significant difference in the median values of the two distributions
represented by these boxplots. Whisker lines extending above and below the boxes
correspond 1.5 times the magnitude of the range comprised the middle 50% of the data
distribution (approximately of normally distributed data). Points falling outside of the range
are considered outliers and are plotted individually.

related to assault frequency, t = 2.73, p = .023 (Figure 4). At low levels (.5 SD
below the mean) of preference stochasticity, learning rate was unrelated to
assault frequency (p = .78).

Relationships With Clinical Variables Among Assaulted

Adolescents
We failed to observe significant relationships between modeled performance
and PTSD severity (p = .48), depression symptoms (p = .59), or age at first
assault (p = .93).
Lenow et al. 171

Figure 3.  Performance on the task (i.e., number of times the participant chose the
face with the highest empirical probability of returning the money) was negatively
related to the frequency of assault exposure.

Discussion
The current study observed a significant interaction between assault expo-
sure frequency, the rate at which participants update their beliefs about oth-
ers (e.g., learning rate), and the extent to which participants demonstrate
randomness in their social preferences (i.e., preference stochasticity).
Specifically, we found that adolescent girls exposed to IV who demonstrated
higher learning rates also demonstrated greater preference stochasticity and
that the magnitude of this interaction scaled positively with assault exposure
frequency. Furthermore, the assaulted sample demonstrated overall worse
model-estimated performance than the control adolescent girls (i.e., were
less likely to choose the face that was associated with the highest payoff
probability as the most trustworthy).
Normative reinforcement learning models prescribe higher learning
rates when the reward structure of one’s environment is highly variable
(i.e., under conditions of volatility), and human decision makers have been
172 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33(1)

Figure 4.  Graphical depiction of the statistically significant interaction between LR

and preference stochasticity in relation to assault frequency.
Note. At high levels of LR, preference stochasticity was positively related to assault frequency.
At low levels of LR, there was no relationship between preference stochasticity and assault
frequency. LR = learning rate.

shown to make this task-sensitive adjustment in learning rate as well—

suggesting that higher learning rates are an adaptive response to volatile
learning environments (Rushworth & Behrens, 2008). Intuitively, also, it
seems reasonable that in the context of a highly variable reward structure,
the most reliable, pertinent information would be that which was most
recently observed, rather than temporally distal information (because the
reward structure has likely changed since the acquisition of distal informa-
tion). Higher learning rates favor recently acquired information and there-
fore enable this adaptation.
Although very speculative, the interaction between higher learning rates
and greater preference stochasticity among assaulted girls could indicate a
persistent cognitive adaptation to chronic exposure to significantly volatile
social environments (e.g., environments in which the behavior of conspecif-
ics is highly non-stationary and seemingly unpredictable). This hypothesis is
Lenow et al. 173

partly supported by the following observation within our sample: Every

assaulted girl included in the study had been assaulted at least once by a
known perpetrator (e.g., family member, friend/acquaintance), suggesting
that our IV-exposed sample experienced some level of betrayal of trust or
social expectancy violation as a part of their trauma histories. Accordingly,
it is reasonable to speculate that our IV sample represents a group of adoles-
cents exposed to socially volatile environments and that the current study’s
findings could reflect an adaption to these socially volatile environments.
Importantly, in a non-volatile environment, this higher learning rate would
not be adaptive; indeed, it could prove to be maladaptive to constantly
update one’s expectations of value by disproportionately incorporating more
recently acquired information, thereby neglecting cumulative reward histo-
ries (e.g., trusting someone who most recently engaged in a positive behav-
ior but in the past engaged in negative behaviors). Furthermore, having
highly exploratory or stochastic tendencies in preference formation, trusting
behavior, and/or action selection could prove to be maladaptive in more
stable environments in which the optimal, reward-maximizing behavior is
simply to exploit current knowledge by choosing options with the highest
expected reward. In the context of the current study’s paradigm, in which
there was a period of volatility after the contingencies of Face 1 and Face 3
reversed, relatively higher learning rates and greater preference stochasticity
might be expected and indeed adaptive; however, assaulted girls demon-
strated overall worse performance than their control counterparts, suggest-
ing that the observed alterations in their computational learning variables
conferred a performance disadvantage, proving to be suboptimal given the
current task circumstances. We cannot disambiguate with the current study
design whether the observed alterations reflect a task-specific overcorrec-
tion in learning rate and preference stochasticity or whether they reflect a
preexisting bias in these learning variables. Regardless of the interpretation,
these results demonstrate that assaulted girls when evaluating the trustwor-
thiness of other conspecifics engage in differential learning processes and
demonstrate poorer performance than their control counterparts. These dif-
ferences could potentially be relevant to understanding higher rates of psy-
chopathology and re-victimization among victims of IV.
For example, volatile, unstable, and uncertain social environments (to
which these IV victims are likely persistently exposed) could be associated
with impairments in learning about and appropriately responding to social
environmental cues, thus impairing IV victims’ abilities to effectively (and
safely) navigate novel social environments. These decision impairments
could predispose IV victims to engage in socially risky situations, thus lead-
ing to increased risk for re-victimization or subsequent abuse (e.g., entering
174 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33(1)

and remaining in unsafe situations, remaining in abusive relationships).

Understanding these risk factors at a more mechanistic level affords the abil-
ity to create targeted interventions for minimizing these risks among vulner-
able populations. For instance, one novel approach might be to explicitly
train these reinforcement learning mechanisms in computerized tasks, akin to
retraining attention in cognitive bias modification protocols for anxiety dis-
orders (Hallion & Ruscio, 2011).
With respect to broader clinical implications, it has been previously dem-
onstrated that depressive symptoms are associated with greater exploratory
behavior and more reflexive (as opposed to reflective) learning and decision
making within a reinforcement learning framework (Blanco, Otto, Maddox,
Beevers, & Love, 2013). More specifically, this increase in exploration
among individuals with more depression symptoms was observed as being
suboptimal (i.e., occurring on trials in which it would have been optimal to
exploit rather than explore). In the current study, greater assault frequency
was associated with a decision-making strategy characterized by a “recency
bias,” such that more recent outcomes influenced decision making to a greater
degree (i.e., higher learning rates) than previous trials. This is in contrast to
the control adolescent girls who demonstrated a decision-making strategy
characterized by greater use of previous outcomes and less bias from the
most recent outcome (i.e., lower learning rate). To the extent that these deci-
sion-making strategies indicate more reflexive, as opposed to reflective,
behavior, assaulted girls who were more “reflexive” were also more explor-
atory (i.e., stochastic) in their preferences. Both of these observations, mir-
roring the findings above among depressive subjects, might indicate that risk
factors for psychopathology, such as depressive symptoms and exposure to
IV, are associated with overly simplistic (i.e., less informationally rich) inter-
nal models of their environment. These shared decision-making strategies in
a depressed sample and adolescent IV-exposed sample suggest the possibility
that altered decision-making strategies operate as a generalized risk mecha-
nisms for psychopathology.
As shown in Table 1, the groups do not differ exclusively on exposure to
IV; there are additional behavioral differences between the groups (e.g., past
psychiatric diagnoses), which introduces an ambiguity as to whether the
study’s observed between-group differences in modeling outcomes are associ-
ated with exposure to IV per se; however, that the modeling outcomes were
not related to clinical symptomatology among the assaulted sample suggests
that the observed group differences are not due solely to these clinical charac-
teristics. Furthermore, because of the cross-sectional, correlational design of
the current study, we cannot make causal inferences regarding the observed
relationship between exposure to IV and the observed differences in modeling
Lenow et al. 175

outcomes. Other limitations of the current study include the small size of its
sample, which was notably limited to female adolescents. Although these
results are conceptually in line with prior studies suggesting altered social
decision making among young female IV victims (Messman-Moore, &
Brown, 2006; Yeater, Treat, Viken, & McFall, 2010), it is not clear that the
current results would generalize to older- or mixed-sexed samples. Finally, we
cannot know whether the observed differences are specific to the social
domain (i.e., the extent to which the current study’s task selectively manipu-
lated social cognitive constructs) or are, rather, domain-general. Regardless,
the learning and decision-making mechanisms implicated here are likely
involved in both domain-general and domain-specific processes and are rele-
vant for characterizing the cognitive correlates of IV exposure and, impor-
tantly, for advising future research.
Despite these limitations, however, we believe the current study’s novel
findings recommend, generally, the application of computational accounts of
learning and decision making to psychiatric populations (or, as in the current
study, populations at risk for psychopathology). Furthermore, although
highly speculative, our current findings might provide a basis for the notion
that a person’s life history, especially from an early age—the formative
aggregation of past experiences and environmental exposures—might be
associated with corresponding alterations in learning and decision-making
mechanisms and thus might powerfully influence learning and decision-
making priors when confronting new environments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: Portions of this work were supported
through grants 1R21MH097784-01, T32 DA022981-02, and UL1RR029884. No addi-
tional external funding was received for this study. The content is solely the responsi-
bility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National
Center for Research Resources or the National Institutes of Health.

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Author Biographies
Jennifer Lenow is a PhD student at New York University in the Department of
Psychology. Currently, she is interested in studying the computational and neural
mechanisms by which affective states shape the context in which we make decisions,
specifically decisions about how to interact with and explore our environments.
Before beginning her PhD, Jennifer studied psychology at Hendrix College where she
studied the effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive processes related to and underly-
ing mating decisions. After earning her BA, she worked as a research assistant at the
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, investigating the behavioral and neural
correlates of interpersonal violence exposure among at-risk adolescent girls as well as
adult females with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Joshua Cisler is an assistant professor in the Psychiatric Research Institute (PRI) and
conducts functional neuroimaging research in the Brain Imaging Research Center.
His doctoral research focused on emotional and cognitive mechanisms that mediate
anxiety disorders. He completed a clinical internship at the Medical University of
South Carolina through the National Crime Victim Research and Treatment Center,
where his research focused on understanding risk factors for psychopathology follow-
ing trauma, with a particular focus on assaultive events (e.g., physical and sexual
assault). He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Brain Imaging Research
Center, where he received training in fMRI methodology and advanced computa-
tional approaches to imaging analysis. His research focuses on identifying disruptions
at the neural network level of analysis that mediate risk for mental health disorders
following assaultive violence exposure and understanding how treatment modifies
functioning within these neural networks. His clinical expertise is in adult anxiety
disorders, with a particular emphasis on PTSD.
Keith Bush is an assistant professor of computer science in the Donaghey College of
Engineering and Information Technology (EIT) at University of Arkansas at Little
Rock. His PhD thesis work, completed in 2008 under the advisory of Chuck Anderson,
investigated stable function approximation architectures for learning control strate-
gies in partially observable domains. During 2008 to 2010, he was a postdoctoral
fellow in the Reasoning and Learning Lab of McGill University. Working with Joelle
Pineau and physiologists at the Montreal Neurological Institute, he helped develop
adaptive neurostimulation algorithms for the treatment of epilepsy. Currently, he
studies the interactions between learning and non-linear dynamic systems. These
interactions can occur in multiple ways: learning of system dynamics from data (pre-
dictive modeling and simulation), learning control strategies within dynamic systems
(reinforcement learning), or identification of unknown systems through interaction
and exploration (system identification).