Age-Related Decline in Children's Reward Sensitivity: Blacks' Diminished Returns.

Shervin Assari

doi:10.22158/rhs.v5n3p112

Abstract

It is important to study the correlates of reward sensitivity since it predicts high-risk behaviors. While ageing reduces children's reward sensitivity and its associated risk taking, there is more to find out about racial differences in regard to the effect of age on reward sensitivity. Minorities' Diminished Returns (MDRs) suggest that resources and assets show weaker effects on Black children than White children. We compared White children to Black children as for the effects of age on reward sensitivity. This cross-sectional study included 10533 American children who participated in the baseline of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The independent variable was age, while the dependent variable was reward sensitivity as captured by the behavioral approach/behavioral avoidance system (BAS-BIS). Gender, parental education, marital status, parental education, and household income were the covariates. Higher age was associated with less reward sensitivity. A significant interaction was found between race and age when it comes to children's reward sensitivity. It suggested that age is associated with a smaller gain in terms of reduced reward sensitivity in Black children than White children. Age is more likely to reduce reward sensitivity in White children than Black children. This finding is in line with MDRs, and may be due to social racism, segregation, stratification, and discrimination.

Highlights

Gray and McNaughton’s early (Gray, 1991) and recent (McNaughton & Gray, 2000) work has theorized the Behavioral Approach System (BAS) and the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) as reinforcement and reward sensitivity
Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) refer to significantly weaker associations between socioeconomic status (SES) indicators, such as parental education, household income, behavioral and health outcomes for any racial minority group, among the Black population compared to the White population (Assari, 2018; Assari, 2018f)
A high risk of ADHD (Assari & Caldwell, 2019a) and obesity (Assari, Boyce, Bazargan, Mincy, & Caldwell, 2019) is reported among high SES Black children; a pattern that does not exist for high SES White children. 1.1 Aims Built on MDRs, we compared Black children to White children as for the effect of age on reward sensitivity

Summary

Introduction

Gray and McNaughton’s early (Gray, 1991) and recent (McNaughton & Gray, 2000) work has theorized the Behavioral Approach System (BAS) and the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) as reinforcement and reward sensitivity. The BAS-based scores, like reward sensitivity, closely correlate with the use of tobacco (Barr, Pizzagalli, Culhane, Goff, & Evins, 2008; Cummings, Gearhardt, Miller, Hyde, & Lumeng, 2019; Janes et al, 2015; Pergadia et al, 2014; Powell, Dawkins, & Davis, 2002; Snuggs & Hajek, 2013), alcohol (Aloi et al, 2020; Black & Rosen, 2011; Boger et al, 2014; Enoch, Gorodetsky, Hodgkinson, Roy, & Goldman, 2011), and food (Cummings et al, 2020), which results in addiction and obesity (Carver & White, 1994) They predict other risk behaviors such as aggression (Harmon-Jones, 2003) and sexual risk taking (Balda, Anderson, & Itzhak, 2006; Opel et al, 2015). Children, adolescents, risk behaviors, emotion regulation, reward www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/rhs

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