Electrophysiological correlates of learning from social feedback in Younger and Older Adults

Feedback learning supports flexible behavior in changing environmental contexts, but declines with age. Motivational aging theories, however, suggest that socio-emotional feedback can reduce these deficits, though it is unclear whether this effect depends on the social, emotional or communicative information in feedback. Participants from two age groups, n= 24 older adults (M = 72.37 years; SD=3.37) and n = 22 younger adults (M = 22.63 years; SD=1.78), therefore completed a probabilistic learning task in which stimulus–response associations had to be learned via unfamiliar social (hand gestures) or non-social (abstract shapes) feedback. To capture neural correlates of feedback processing, two ERP components were investigated; the feedback-related negativity (FRN), associated with the detection of unexpected events, and the P3b component, linked to working memory updating. Results revealed that younger and older adults learned more effectively from social than non-social feedback, with older adults benefitting most. The FRN was enhanced after social feedback in older adults, but after non-social feedback in younger adults. The P3b was more pronounced for social feedback, primarily driven by larger valence-related differences. In contrast, non-social feedback elicited increased frontal activation, indicating higher processing effort irrespective of participants’ age. These findings reveal a processing advantage for social feedback that appears biologically rooted rather than primarily explained by motivational aging theories, which may require additional facets such as emotional or communicative information.