Non-contingent affective outcomes influence judgments of control.

Our main goal in these experiments was to examine whether affective valence plays a role in judgments of control (JoC) in intentional action. To test this, we asked participants to completevariationsofasimple aiming task in which words appeared in place of clicked targets. The affective content of the words was manipulated during the experiments but was not contingent on participants' performance. Throughout the task, participants were periodically asked to judge their JoC.Thus, JoC judgments in this task included contributions of a well-established cue to judgments of control, task performance, and a source of affect that was not related to task performance. We found thatmetacognitions of controlvaried consistentlyacross levels of affect, with stronger judgments of being in control for conditions with positive outcome words (e.g., 'puppy') and the weaker judgments of being in control for conditions with negative outcome words (e.g.,'killer').These results suggestaffective outcomes can influence JoC, even though the outcomes are not related to performance.

How adolescents learn to build social bonds: A developmental computational account of social explore-exploit decision-making.

Building social bonds is a critical task of adolescence that affords opportunities for learning, identity formation, and social support. Failing to develop close relationships in adolescence hinders adult interpersonal functioning and contributes to problems such as loneliness and depression. During adolescence, increased reward sensitivity and greater social flexibility both contribute to healthy social development, yet we lack a clear theory of how these processes interact to support social functioning. Here, we propose synthesizing these two literatures using a computational reinforcement learning framework that recasts how adolescents pursue and learn from social rewards as a social explore-exploit problem. To become socially skilled, adolescents must balance both their efforts to form individual bonds within specific groups and manage memberships across multiple groups to maximize access to social resources. We draw on insights from sociological studies on social capital in collective networks and neurocognitive research on foraging and cooperation to describe the social explore-exploit dilemma faced by adolescents navigating a modern world with increasing access to diverse resources and group memberships. Our account provides important new directions for examining the dynamics of adolescent behavior in social groups and understanding how social value computations can support positive relationships into adulthood.