DATASET: Experience of maltreatment is associated with a blunted calibration of control beliefs

We used a recently developed task, the Wheel Stopping (WS) task, to measure and manipulate control beliefs and stress, and combined this with a novel self-report measure of exploration.

The WS task utilises two between-subjects manipulations of control: task controllability (high vs low), and performance feedback (relative positive vs relative negative). We show that despite similar improvements in objective task performance, maltreated participants increased their control beliefs less over time (semi-partial R² = 0.0004). Further, whereas both groups responded equally to the task manipulations, only control participants leveraged relative positive feedback to reduce task-related stress (semi-partial R² = 0.009) and increase goal-directed exploration (semi-partial R² = 0.0015).