From early in life, we encounter both controllable environments, in which our actions can causally influence the reward outcomes we experience, and uncontrollable environments, in which they cannot. Environmental controllability is theoretically proposed to organize our behavior. In controllable contexts, we can learn to proactively select instrumental actions that bring about desired outcomes. In uncontrollable environments, Pavlovian learning enables hard-wired, reflexive reactions to anticipated, motivationally salient events, providing “default” behavioral responses. Previous studies characterizing the balance between Pavlovian and instrumental learning systems across development have yielded divergent findings, with some studies observing heightened expression of Pavlovian learning during adolescence and others observing a reduced influence of Pavlovian learning during this developmental stage. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether a theoretical model of controllability-dependent arbitration between learning systems might explain these seemingly divergent findings in the developmental literature, with the specific hypothesis that adolescents’ action selection might be particularly sensitive to environmental controllability. To test this hypothesis, 90 participants, aged 8–27, performed a probabilistic-learning task that enables estimation of Pavlovian influence on instrumental learning, across both controllable and uncontrollable conditions. We fit participants’ data with a reinforcement-learning model in which controllability inferences adaptively modulate the dominance of Pavlovian versus instrumental control. Relative to children and adults, adolescents exhibited greater flexibility in calibrating the expression of Pavlovian bias to the degree of environmental controllability. These findings suggest that sensitivity to environmental reward statistics that organize motivated behavior may be heightened during adolescence.

中文翻译：

---

青少年根据可控性推断灵活地调整行动选择

从生命的早期开始，我们就遇到了可控环境和不可控环境，在可控环境中，我们的行为可以因果影响我们所经历的奖励结果，而在不可控环境中，我们的行为则不能。环境可控性是从理论上提出来组织我们的行为的。在可控的环境中，我们可以学会主动选择能够带来预期结果的工具性行动。在无法控制的环境中，巴甫洛夫学习能够对预期的、动机上显着的事件做出硬连线的反射性反应，从而提供“默认”行为反应。先前的研究描述了巴甫洛夫学习系统和器乐学习系统在整个发展过程中的平衡，但得出了不同的结果，一些研究观察到青春期巴甫洛夫学习的表达增强，而另一些研究则观察到巴甫洛夫学习在这个发展阶段的影响力减弱。在本研究中，我们旨在调查学习系统之间的可控性依赖仲裁的理论模型是否可以解释发展文献中这些看似不同的发现，具体假设是青少年的行为选择可能对环境可控性特别敏感。为了检验这一假设，90 名 8-27 岁的参与者执行了一项概率学习任务，该任务能够在可控和不可控条件下估计巴甫洛夫对工具学习的影响。我们将参与者的数据与强化学习模型相匹配，在该模型中，可控性推断自适应地调节巴甫洛夫相对于仪器控制的主导地位。相对于儿童和成人，青少年在根据环境可控程度校准巴甫洛夫偏差的表达方面表现出更大的灵活性。这些发现表明，在青春期，对组织动机行为的环境奖励统计数据的敏感性可能会提高。