Development of Monetary and Social Reward Processes

Di Wang,Jiannong Shi,Tongran Liu

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-11558-6

Abstract

The current study investigated monetary and social reward processing in children, adolescents and adults with adapted incentive-delay tasks and self-report questionnaires. Both tasks had three levels of reward magnitudes (no, low, and high). Qualified participants received 15 Chinese Yuan and an honor certificate as monetary and social rewards, respectively. The results indicated that both monetary and social rewards effectively speeded up responses for all three age groups as reward magnitude increased in the choice reaction time task. Among adolescents and adults, males exhibited faster responses in high reward than in low reward condition, while females responded equally fast in both conditions. Among children, girls responded faster to high reward than low reward condition. However, boys committed more errors than girls in low and high reward conditions, and they had exhibited more errors in high reward than that in no reward condition for social reward. Regarding the subjective ratings, both children and adolescents reported higher motivation for social reward than for monetary reward. These findings indicated that the males in the adolescent and adult groups were more sensitive to reward than were the females. Moreover, tangible and quantitative social reward had stronger incentive power than monetary reward among children and adolescents.

Highlights

Rewards can affect individual’s learning and behavior and function to maximize benefits
Using the monetary incentive delay (MID) and social incentive delay (SID) task paradigms, recent studies on monetary and social rewards have endeavored to identify their incentive differences9, 10, 16, 17, 19. Most of these studies have involved adult participants, and the results indicated that monetary reward had stronger incentive value than social reward at the behavioral level and on reward-related cortex activation10, 19–21
The results revealed a main effect of reward magnitude, F(2,168) = 113.19, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.57; post hoc comparisons revealed significantly faster response time (RT) for the high-reward than for the no-reward condition (t [89] = −11.48, p < 0.001), for the low-reward than for the no-reward condition (t [89] = −10.32, p < 0.001) and for the high-reward than for the low-reward condition (t [89] = −6.21, p < 0.001)

Summary

Introduction

Rewards can affect individual’s learning and behavior and function to maximize benefits. It is vital to study developmental changes in reward processes and how rewards affect children and adolescents’ behavior and learning Rewards such as food, monetary and social rewards are generally considered to be related to human motivation and behavior. Using the MID and SID task paradigms, recent studies on monetary and social rewards have endeavored to identify their incentive differences9, 10, 16, 17, 19 Most of these studies have involved adult participants, and the results indicated that monetary reward had stronger incentive value than social reward at the behavioral level and on reward-related cortex activation . In addition to smiling face feedback, an honor certificate was issued to qualified participants following the SID task

Objectives

Results

Conclusion