Self-regulation and learning from failures: Probabilistic reversal learning task reveals lower flexibility persisting after punishment in procrastinators.

What is it about?

Procrastination is a self-regulation failure in which people irrationally delay intended actions despite expecting of negative consequences. Trait procrastination is estimated to affect 15-20% of the total population and leads to lower performance, satisfaction from achievements, and quality of life. Our previous fMRI results revealed impaired error processing (lower error-related activity of the anterior cingulate cortex) and lack of ability to intensify executive-control during the punishment context (no increase in activity in prefrontal regions) in highly procrastinating subjects. This led us to the question of whether procrastination is related to impaired learning on errors and punishments. In the current study low (LP) and high (HP) procrastinating students took part in a monetary probabilistic reversal learning task with separate reward and punishment conditions. Several learning models and model-free measures were applied to the collected behavioral data. Results suggest lower flexibility in the learning task in HP subjects, which can further decrease during the punishment condition. Moreover, as half of the participants started with reward and half with the punishment condition, we could find that, HP subjects who began with the punishment condition tended to be less flexible throughout the rest of the task. These results suggest that impaired learning from errors and punishments may prevent highly procrastinating subjects from correcting their behaviors and add to the persistence of procrastination. We also conclude that impaired learning on errors and punishments might be a more general mechanism underpinning other self-regulation disorders

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Why is it important?

Trait procrastination is possibly the most common self-regulation disorder, estimated to affect 15-20% of the total population. Procrastination leads to lower performance, satisfaction from achievements, and quality of life. Thus it is important to better understand the underlying mechanisms, which can then allow for development of more effective interventions. Supposedly, our results do not limit to trait procrastination itself, but can point at the mechanisms underlying also other self-regulation disorders.