Reward Receipt Research Articles

Children's affective, behavioral, and cognitive responses to social comparison

Relative outcomes in social commerce with peers are potent determinants of cognitions and behavior in young children. Although there has been considerable attention given to the behavioral consequences of social comparisons following the receipt of rewards, there has been less concern with cognitive or affective consequences. Additionally, little is known about the accrued effects of multiple social comparison experiences that may be consistent or inconsistent with one another. In the present study, young children received a constant level of reward but the amount they saw a peer receive was varied. There were two sequences of reward distribution, and in a given sequence children received either the same number of rewards as the peer (=), more (+), or fewer (−). In a 3 × 3 factorial design all possible combinations occurred. A negative inequality in reward distribution, no matter where it fell in a sequence, made children sad and inclined children to distribute fewer rewards to peers. When a sequence contained an initial experience of positive inequality, children decreased subsequent levels of self-reward. Experiencing a comparison that revealed a negative inequality in reward distribution also disrupted children's accuracy in appraising the overall distribution of rewards: even when an initial negative inequality was completely offset by an equivalent experience of positive inequality, children inaccurately concluded that they had received fewer rewards than their peers.

Different odors in rats from large and small rewards

Although rats emit different odors in a goalbox upon receipt of unsignaled reward and nonreward, recent studies have failed to find odor differences from unsignaled large and small reward, apparently disconfirming the generalization that frustration-producing manipulations lead to a distinctive emission. Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that providing discriminative runway signals, permitting subjects to anticipate the large and small rewards, would lead to different odor emissions. Results supported the hypothesis: donor rats emitted odors sufficiently different to provide cues for differential responding in test subjects. However, an attempt to replicate the recent observations on unsignaled rewards suggested that these, too, occasioned goalbox emissions. Therefore, Experiment 2 again gave donors unsignaled large and small reward, but increased the incentive for discrimination in test rats. Test subjects readily discriminated, confirming the conclusion that large and small rewards occasion different emissions even without discriminative signals and supporting a frustration-odor interpretation.

Activity of trigeminothalamic neurons in medullary dorsal horn of awake monkeys trained in a thermal discrimination task.

We analyzed the activity of 51 trigeminothalamic neurons in the medullary dorsal horn (trigeminal nucleus caudalis) of monkeys during the performance of behavioral tasks requiring the monkeys to discriminate innocuous and noxious thermal stimuli applied to the face and to detect the onset of visual stimuli. Static properties of trigeminothalamic neurons in behaving monkeys were similar to those in anesthetized monkeys. Responses to passively presented mechanical and thermal stimuli, receptive-field properties, and conduction velocities did not differ in the awake and anesthetized states. For most wide dynamic range and nociceptive-specific trigeminothalamic neurons, there was a negative correlation between the magnitude of thermally evoked activity and behavioral latencies to discriminate 47 and 49 degrees C stimuli. Thus, both groups of neurons provide information that could be used by the monkey to discriminate noxious thermal stimuli. The magnitude of thermal responses of trigeminothalamic neurons was modulated by the behavioral significance of the stimulus. Behaviorally relevant thermal stimuli presented during the thermal discrimination task produced a greater neuronal response than equivalent irrelevant thermal stimuli presented between behavioral trials or presented while the monkey performed the visual detection task. Neurons whose activity is modulated by behavioral state are likely to be involved in discrimination of thermal stimuli, since the activity of these neurons correlates with the behavioral response to the stimuli and information from the modulated neurons is sent to the thalamus. Some trigeminothalamic neurons that exhibited somatosensory responses also responded to behaviorally relevant stimuli and events associated with trial initiation and receipt of reward in the behavioral tasks. Similar events outside a behavioral task evoked no neuronal responses. These task-related responses were similar to those described previously for medullary dorsal horn neurons not identified as to projection sites (14).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

A comparison of standardized and group contingencies in a classroom setting

The applied use of group operant contingencies has proliferated in recent years creating the need for experimental comparisons of the many procedural variations possible. The present study compared the effects of two group contingencies (distinguished by the receipt of reward by all group members versus only the responders), standardized contingency, free reward, and request-only in influencing the submission of test questions by students in a college classroom. The group contingencies produced the highest levels of responding with the reward variable effecting a small but stable performance difference. The standardized contingencies generated a lower response level while the free-reward and request-only manipulations produced negligible responding. The results suggest that an “interdependent” group contingency which provides reward only to those who perform the target behavior is a superior procedure for behavior influence on a group level. Standardized contingencies may be the least effective of such procedures.

Attentional Determinants of Children's Self-Control in Waiting and Working Situations

PATTERSON, CHARLOTTE J., and CARTER, D. BRUCE. Attentional Determinants of Children's SelfControl in Waiting and Working Situations. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 272-275. This study investigated the effect of reward salience on preschool children's self-control in instrumental waiting and working situations. In the waiting conditions, receipt of a preferred reward was contingent on waiting for a given length of time in a standard delay-of-gratification paradigm. In the working conditions, rewards were contingent on completion of a given amount of work in a task-persistence situation. Rewards were either available or unavailable for attention during the test period. The amount of time children sustained waiting or working behavior served as the main dependent measure. As in earlier research, self-control was less effective in waiting conditions when rewards were available for attention. However, presence of the rewards facilitated self-control in the working conditions. These results suggest that the cognitive determinants of effective self-control in working situations differ substantially from those in waiting situations.

The effects of shifts in delay of liquid sucrose reward in thirsty rats

In a two-shift experiment, four independent groups of thirsty rats received the following treatments: NNN, DDD, NDN, and DND, with each letter denoting the duration of the delay (0 or 30 sec) before receipt of the sucrose reward in each of the three phases of the experiment. While no reliable positive contrast effect was obtained in either shift phase, a significant negative contrast effect was obtained in both shift phases. The paucity of empirical data in this area hinders adequate explanatory attempts.

Effects of self-esteem and expected duration of interaction on liking for a highly rewarding partner.

Psychological theories predicated on the assumption of human selfishness and theories based on principles of equity may lead to conflicting predictions about when a person will like his partner. Of special interest are a person's reactions to receiving uncommonly high rewards. The present study addressed this issue by examing the development of same-sex liking in 40 female college students. It was hypothesized that subjects with lowered self-esteem, having a great need for interpersonal rewards, would react favorably to the receipt of such rewards, even if underserved. Subjects with raised self-esteem, on the other hand, having had their need for rewards met, should respond unfavorably to the receipt of high rewards, desiring a more equitable distribution of reward. These effects should be strong only when continuing dyadic interaction is expected (i.e., as issues of stability and reciprocity become salient). The predictions were confirmed.

Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Children's Subsequent Intrinsic Interest

GREENE, DAVID, and LEPPER, MARK R. Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Children's Subsequent Intrinsic Interest. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 1141-1145. Preschool children were asked, in individual sessions, to engage in an activity of high initial interest, either for its own sake or in order to obtain an extrinsic reward. Subsequently, children who had undertaken the target activity as a means to some ulterior end showed less intrinsic interest in this activity, as measured unobtrusively several weeks later in the children's classrooms, than control subjects who had either received the same reward unexpectedly or had engaged in the activity without expectation or receipt of extrinsic rewards.

Differences in the electrophysiological correlates upon receipt of a food reward and nonreward in the rat

Differences in the electrophysiological correlates upon receipt of a food reward and nonreward in the rat

Association of neutral objects with rewards: Effects of different numbers of conditioning trials and of anticipated reward versus actual reward

The major purpose of the study was to determine the kinds and amounts of “conditioning” that occur when Ss are anticipating the future receipt of rewards rather than actually obtaining rewards. A minor purpose of the study was to determine the possible effects of different numbers of conditioning trials. This resulted in a 2 × 3 design: half of the Ss actually received rewards (pennies) and half anticipated the receipt of rewards a day later, and the Ss were further subdivided into three groups receiving either 5, 15, or 30 conditioning trials. The Ss were 84 children from the third and fourth grades of Nashville public schools. The “conditioning apparatus” was a spin-wheel game in which the stopping of a pointer on one nonsense syllable resulted in the winning of two pennies and the stopping on another syllable resulted in the loss of a penny. A third syllable was experimentally neutral, being associated neither with the receipt of money nor the loss of money. Conditioning effects on the syllables were assessed with five dependent measures: verbal evaluation, reward expectaney, eye movements, pupillary response, and instrumental viewing responses. Significant effects were found for verbal evaluation and reward expectancy but not for the other three dependent measures. Effects due to anticipation were equally strong as effects due to the actual pairing of neutral objects with rewards, and the effects were as strong for Ss receiving only five conditioning trials as for those receiving larger numbers of trials. The results were discussed with respect to (a) the place of reward anticipation in molar behavior theory, and (b) the possible implications for the underlying processes at work in our typical conditioning procedures.

CORD BLOOD LIPIDS OF NORMAL INFANTS AND INFANTS OF DIABETIC MOTHERS.

The midbrain dopamine system has been ascribed roles in reward expectancy, error detection, prediction, and memory. However, these theories typically do not differentiate between dopamine response and action in different forebrain terminal fields. We measured dopamine release in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), nucleus accumbens (NAc), and dorsal striatum (DS) of rats exposed to the same maze apparatus under three behavioral conditions: a set-shift task in which reward depended on discrimination learning and extradimensional set-shifting, a yoked condition in which reward was intermittent and not under the control of the subject, and a “reward-retrieval” variant in which reward was certain on every trial. We found dissociable patterns of dopamine release associated with learning, uncertainty, and reward. Dopamine increased in all three regions when reward was contingent on rule learning and shifting or was uncertain. These increases were sustained after behavior. There was a significant correlation between the magnitude of increase in PFC dopamine and the rapidity with which rats shifted between discrimination rules. In the yoke condition, in which the receipt of reward was always uncertain, the opposite relationship between dopamine levels and likelihood of reward was observed. Predictable, noncontingent reward was associated with increased dopamine levels in the NAc and DS. In contrast, PFC dopamine did not increase significantly above baseline levels. Thus, the dopaminergic projections to the PFC and nucleus accumbens were selectively, yet differentially, activated in situations of uncertainty and cognitive demand, whereas the dopaminergic projection to the DS responded independently of task differences in learning and reward.