Catherine Hartley, PhD: Control and the Calibration of Motivated Behavior
Event Actions
This discussion with Dr. Catherine Hartley, New York University is part of the Computational and Network Neuroscience Series.
This event is part of a colloquium series funded by an R15 AREA award from the National Institute of Mental Health.
About the Speaker
Dr. Catherine Hartley
The controllability of positive or negative environmental events has long been recognized as a critical factor determining their impact on an individual’s motivated behavior. An extensive body of work in animal models suggests that controllable and uncontrollable reinforcement yield divergent effects on subsequent behavior. In this talk, Dr. Catherine Hartley will present studies demonstrating that the controllability of motivationally significant outcomes similarly modulates subsequent behavior in humans, and examine the neural mechanisms underlying these effects. Dr. Hartley will argue that estimates of agency, derived from one’s experience of control, may be used to calibrate the nature of one’s motivated behavior along a continuum ranging from proactive (‘What can I do in this environment?’) to reactive (‘What will this environment do to me?’), and present data suggesting that the balance between proactive and reactive responding may change dynamically over the course of development.
Dr. Hartley is Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University where she directs the Hartley Lab.