Terms Of Rewards Research Articles

Exploring expected reward and efficacy in enhancing cognitive control in patients with depression

ABSTRACT Background Depression is associated with impairments in cognitive control. Considering the lack of mechanistic models accounting for cognitive control deficits in depression, the expected value of control (EVC) theory offers a mechanistic view for allocating cognitive control emphasizing motivational components (efficacy, value). Efficacy refers to the possibility that an effort leads to a special outcome and reward refers to the value (amount) associated with the outcome. This study aimed to examine the role of the EVC in depression. Method This study used a within-between-subject design. Participants with depression (n = 36) and healthy controls (n = 31) completed a clinical diagnostic interview, the Beck Depression Inventory-II, the General Health Questionnaire-12, and a computer-based incentivized Stroop Color-Word Paradigm in which levels of efficacy (high vs. low) and the amount of rewards (high vs. low) were presented as cues before target stimuli. Results We found significant interaction effects of group × efficacy and efficacy × reward in terms of reaction time in the Stroop Paradigm. Follow-up analyses indicated the Depressed group were significantly slower than Controls on high efficacy trials, but the two groups did not differ significantly on low efficacy trials. Additionally, on high efficacy trials, reward did not influence performance, but on low efficacy trials, high reward improved performance in both groups. Limitation Lack of neurological measures and eye tracking techniques. Conclusion Overall, our findings suggest that reward and efficacy may jointly improve cognitive control allocation and highlight the need for further research examining EVC theory as a mechanistic account of cognitive control deficits in depression.

Reframing dopamine: A controlled controller at the limbic-motor interface.

Pavlovian influences notoriously interfere with operant behaviour. Evidence suggests this interference sometimes coincides with the release of the neuromodulator dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. Suppressing such interference is one of the targets of cognitive control. Here, using the examples of active avoidance and omission behaviour, we examine the possibility that direct manipulation of the dopamine signal is an instrument of control itself. In particular, when instrumental and Pavlovian influences come into conflict, dopamine levels might be affected by the controlled deployment of a reframing mechanism that recasts the prospect of possible punishment as an opportunity to approach safety, and the prospect of future reward in terms of a possible loss of that reward. We operationalize this reframing mechanism and fit the resulting model to rodent behaviour from two paradigmatic experiments in which accumbens dopamine release was also measured. We show that in addition to matching animals' behaviour, the model predicts dopamine transients that capture some key features of observed dopamine release at the time of discriminative cues, supporting the idea that modulation of this neuromodulator is amongst the repertoire of cognitive control strategies.

The advantage of cooperation for moderate switching between group exclusion and group reward in the spatial public goods game

Group exclusion and group reward are prevalent in institutional management, which are often used to maintain public cooperation and common resources. However, it remains theoretically unclear how the combination of both mechanisms affects social cooperation. Here we propose a conditional switching between group exclusion and group reward based on an assessment threshold in the spatial public goods game. This mechanism implies that once the frequency of cooperators falls below the assessment threshold, all members in the group are excluded, otherwise, they are all rewarded equally. Using Monte Carlo numerical analysis, we find that a moderate switching between group exclusion and group reward (MSER) can quickly establish high level of cooperation even in harsh social dilemmas, while smaller or excessively large assessment thresholds can weaken the cooperative advantage. Furthermore, we reveal that the MSER mechanism has significant advantages over the pure group exclusion and the pure group reward in terms of the evolution of cooperation and the propagation of mechanism. Moreover, the pure group reward clearly outperforms the pure group exclusion in sustaining cooperation only when the synergy factor is relatively small and the reward intensity is high, while the pure group exclusion significantly performs better than the pure group reward only when the synergy factor is relatively large and the reward intensity is small.

PUNITIVE AND FAIR FORMS OF COMPENSATION FOR HARM TO HEALTH IN THE SOURCES OF LAW AND THE CIVIL LAW DOCTRINE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN THE LATE 19TH - EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Despite the fact that one of the most important tasks for the development of the institution of compensation for losses is recognized as a strict regulation of the conceptual base, in modern civil law, the issues of choosing forms and methods of compensation for harm to health remain without proper theoretical justification and consideration. Since the problems of applying civil law consequences of damage to a given intangible good are usually revealed exclusively in the context of applying the institution of compensation for moral damage, it is of particular interest to study the history of the development of general rules for the onset of tort liability for harm to health, as well as the first attempts to attract insurance compensation funds to protect the property interests of accident victims. Purpose: to study the doctrinal sources and norms of civil law of the Russian Empire of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, related to the development of traditional and alternative legal forms of compensation for harm to health, in order to identify approaches that are relevant in modern conditions. The specific tasks are to identify the problems of legal regulation of the relevant social relations, underlying theoretical approaches and individual significant opinions on the issues of the essence and legal nature of tort liability in its various modifications, as well as alternative legal remedies for harm to health. Methods: general philosophical (materialistic, dialectical), general scientific (logical, system-structural, axiological), specific scientific (formal-legal, historical-legal, systemic) research methods are used. Results: the author substantiates the existence in the sources of law and the civil law doctrine of the Russian Empire of the period under consideration of the prerequisites for an expanded interpretation of the construction of tort liability, where such liability is accompanied by the inclusion of a fair obligation to compensate for material losses of a certain activity. Legal tools to individualize the punitive function of such liability, unusual in the modern era, have been identified (restrictions preventing the transfer of material losses to persons who are not delinquents when they commit crimes, the possibility to cover the indirect consequences of an offense with reward in terms of intentional unlawful acts, etc.). The difference between punitive and fair forms of compensation for harm is presented as a system-forming problem of civil law, the solution of which remains today the methodological «key» to overcome gaps and contradictions in the legal regulation of tort obligations.

Media Coverage of Carbon Neutral Organizations in Costa Rica: Environmental Sustainability Practices and Consumer Recognition

This paper studies the visibility, environmental sustainability practices, and public recognition of Costa Rican organizations participating in the Carbon Neutrality (cn) Program. Through a review of Costa Rican online newspapers, we conclude that the three main actions performed by cn firms are the offsetting of carbon emissions, the replacement of polluting inputs by cleaner substitutes, and employees’ training. The main benefits perceived by these firms include reducing production costs, improving the organizations’ image, and achieving market differentiation. In addition, by using non-parametric statistic procedures, we conclude that “highly cited organizations” tend to achieve the cn certification earlier and have a larger number of environmental certifications than “scarcely cited organizations.” By analyzing newspaper coverage data in conjunction with a consumer recognition survey, we determined that “recognized organizations” tend to be the oldest, the largest, and the most cited in the press. In addition, “recognized entities” also tend to obtain the cn certification sooner than unrecognized entities, which means that there is a reward in terms of public recognition for companies that took the risk of being innovative in reducing their carbon footprint.

Engaging medical physics students in active and authentic learning through the use of monte-carlo simulation and inverse treatment planning

PurposeEngagement and participation of students with the learning process has been recognised as a growing problem across the higher education sector. The aim of this study was to investigate the value and impact of introducing Problem-based Learning (PBL) activities into a radiotherapy physics unit of a postgraduate medical physics course. MethodsComputer-based problem solving activities on 1) monte-carlo modelling of a linear accelerator and 2) inverse radiotherapy treatment planning were designed and implemented into a one-semester unit on radiotherapy physics. The value and impact of the activities on the student learning were evaluated through student surveys, a focus group, and peer observation of the sessions by members of the learning design team. Student attendance and grade profile data are also reported. ResultsOverall the results indicated that students had a positive experience with the new problem solving activities that were implemented. Survey responses from a number of students indicated a desire for increased theoretical and technical support prior to and during activities. Another underlying theme that emerged from survey and focus group response was the perceived lack of reward in terms of marks for their efforts working on the learning activities. This may have influenced students’ choices around attendance and participation. No significant changes were noted in the overall grades achieved in the unit. ConclusionsStudents appreciated the more hands-on approach to learning in the form of more authentic activities that they could directly relate to clinical radiotherapy. Further work is required to update and integrate assessment into the new learning delivery model more directly.

A between-subject design to evaluate students' employability in the Lebanese labor market

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effect of experience abroad, academic success and university reputation on students' employability in the Lebanese labor market.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a between-subject design to identify whether academic success, university reputation and experience abroad have an impact on how potential recruiters (i.e. employers) are perceiving student employability. The study uses 16 fictitious applications of business graduates, which differed in grade-point average, university reputation and experience abroad, rated by 784 Lebanese professionals.FindingsThe results suggest that high-performing students with experience abroad and high-performing students from a reputable university are perceived to be more employable. For low-performing students, having completed an experience abroad results in a lower reward in terms of employability.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study offers an analysis of students' employability through employers' lens; it offers insights for students on how to be perceived as more employable in a context where competition among future workers is fierce.Practical implicationsThe results of this research provide a roadmap for graduates for enhancing their employability in Lebanese markets and offer actionable insights to employers.Originality/valueThe most original contribution of this study is the analysis of university reputation impact on the likelihood of receiving positive feedback during the evaluation process. The impact of two Lebanese universities, one ranked in the QS ranking and one not, was investigated.

Scarcity Mindset Neuro Network Decoding With Reward: A Tree-Based Model and Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.

Resource scarcity imposes challenging demands on the human cognitive system. Insufficient resources cause the scarcity mindset to affect cognitive performance, while reward enhances cognitive function. Here, we examined how reward and scarcity simultaneously contribute to cognitive performance. Experimental manipulation to induce a polar scarcity mindset and reward conditions within participants under functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recording was implemented to explore the mechanism underlying the scarcity mindset and reward in terms of behavior and neurocognition. Participants showed decreased functional connectivity from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) to the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) with a scarcity mindset, a region often implicated in cognitive control. Moreover, under reward conditions, the brain activation of the maximum total Hb bold signal was mainly located in the left hemisphere [channels 1, 3, and 4, left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (L-VLPFC) and channel 6, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (L-DLPFC)], and there was also significant brain activation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (R-DLPFC) in the right hemisphere (channel 17). Furthermore, these data indicate the underlying neural changes of the scarcity mentality and demonstrate that brain activities may underlie reward processing. Additionally, the base-tree machine learning model was trained to detect the mechanism of reward function in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). According to SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), channel 8 contributed the most important effect, as well as demonstrating a high-level interrelationship with other channels.

Efficient Task Offloading for 802.11p-Based Cloud-Aware Mobile Fog Computing System in Vehicular Networks

Various emerging vehicular applications such as autonomous driving and safety early warning are used to improve the traffic safety and ensure passenger comfort. The completion of these applications necessitates significant computational resources to perform enormous latency-sensitive/nonlatency-sensitive and computation-intensive tasks. It is hard for vehicles to satisfy the computation requirements of these applications due to the limit computational capability of the on-board computer. To solve the problem, many works have proposed some efficient task offloading schemes in computing paradigms such as mobile fog computing (MFC) for the vehicular network. In the MFC, vehicles adopt the IEEE 802.11p protocol to transmit tasks. According to the IEEE 802.11p, tasks can be divided into high priority and low priority according to the delay requirements. However, no existing task offloading work takes into account the different priorities of tasks transmitted by different access categories (ACs) of IEEE 802.11p. In this paper, we propose an efficient task offloading strategy to maximize the long-term expected system reward in terms of reducing the executing time of tasks. Specifically, we jointly consider the impact of priorities of tasks transmitted by different ACs, mobility of vehicles, and the arrival/departure of computing tasks, and then transform the offloading problem into a semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) model. Afterwards, we adopt the relative value iterative algorithm to solve the SMDP model to find the optimal task offloading strategy. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme by extensive experiments. Numerical results indicate that the proposed offloading strategy performs well compared to the greedy algorithm.

Latency and Energy Optimization for MEC Enhanced SAT-IoT Networks

Mobile edge computing (MEC) enhanced satellite based internet of things (SAT-IoT) is an important complement for terrestrial networks based IoT, especially for the remote and depopulated areas. For MEC enhanced SAT-IoT networks with multiple satellites and multiple satellite gateways, the coupled user association, offloading decision, computing and communication resource allocation should be jointly optimized to minimize the latency and energy cost. In this paper, the latency and energy optimization for MEC enhanced SAT-IoT networks are formulated as a dynamic mixed-integer programming problem, which is hard to obtain the optimal solutions. To tackle this problem, we decompose the complex problem into two sub-problems. The first one is computing and communication resource allocation with fixed user association and offloading decision, and the second one is joint user association and offloading with optimal resource allocation. For the sub-problem of resource allocation, the optimal solution is proven to be obtained based on Lagrange multiplier method. And then, the second sub-problem is further formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP), and a joint user association and offloading decision with optimal resource allocation (JUAOD-ORA) is proposed based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL). Simulation results show that the proposed approach can achieve better long-term reward in terms of latency and energy cost.

Car Sharing Versus Car Ownership: An Exploratory Examination in India

Sharing economy is a relatively recent development in emerging economies such as India.Sharing economy has been conceptualized to include integrated collaboration in peer to peer commercial exchange of mostly underutilized goods and services for a fee, on a non-ownership basis (Altinat and Taheri, 2019)[1]; a business model consisting of a firm, primarily a service enabler such as Airbnb that acts as an intermediary between the supplier and customers of such goods and services (Kumar, et al, 2018); often referred to as collaborative consumption facilitated by online platforms (Guyader, 2018) [2]. While enjoyment and economic reward in terms of cost savings have been reported in studies as motivators for the use of such access-based services (Lee et al., 2018) [3], collaborative consumption has also been reported to being considered as an alternative ecological mode of consumption (Gopalakrishnanand Matthews,2018) [4].The two prime factors: supply-side flexibility and technology innovations have been enabling the steep growth of peer-to-peer platforms predominantly. The process of market entry for suppliers has been streamlined effectively by the technology innovations and has also made possible the searchable listings for the consumers resulting in keeping the overheads low and intact. The supply-side flexibility is yet another milestone achievement in terms of these shared platform which enables the Uber drivers to add or remove themselves from the available supply of drivers by a mere swipe of their mobile app. The same is the option for the provider who can voluntarily list or delist the offerings of their goods or services as per their wish. As an optimum solution to these problems, online shopping portals provide customers with reliable replacement policies and often refund cash in case of dissatisfaction.

Supply chain coordination to optimize manufacturer's capacity procurement decisions through a new commitment-based model with penalty and revenue-sharing

In this study a commitment-based revenue-sharing and penalty model is proposed to coordinate a supply chain with one manufacturer and a retailer facing stochastic demand. Because of short time to respond to demand and long capacity procurement lead time, the manufacturer needs to procure capacity in advance. As capacity procurement involves monetary investment, it may lead to under-estimation if the risk has to be solely borne by the manufacturer. In contrast, the approach developed within this study induces the retailer to commit not less than the expected demand. At the same time, under-purchase penalty is also introduced to avoid over-commitment. Furthermore, as regards to the existing contract approaches, the retailer is provided of a certain flexibility in terms of under-purchase penalty to avoid transferring the whole demand uncertainty risk on the retailer. On the other hand, the manufacturer is also motivated to produce more through reward in terms of higher revenue percentage for the products demanded more than the commitment. The proposed model is compared with those models based on prevailing revenue-sharing with penalty contracts, in terms of commitment and capacity procurement decisions. Numerical experiments and sensitivity analysis are presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the model and the relative managerial insights.

Relay selection Algorithm for wireless cooperative networks: a learning‐based approach

Relay selection in cooperative communication is a crucial task for achieving the spatial diversity since the improper relay selection can decrease the overall capacity of the network. In this study, the authors use a reinforcement learning technique, called as Q-learning (QL), to solve the relay selection problem. They propose a ‘QL-based relay selection algorithm’ (QL-RSA) for wireless cooperative networks that maximises the total capacity of the network. QL-RSA receives the reward (feedback) in terms of the capacity by learning a multi-node amplify-and-forward cooperative environment with time-varying Rayleigh fading channels. The advantages of QL-RSA are that it is less complex, requires less channel feedback information and it is distributed in a multiple-sources environment as it provides each source a self-learning capability to find the optimal relay without exchanging information with other source nodes.

Stick or twist: roe deer adjust their flight behaviour to the perceived trade-off between risk and reward

Because avoiding predation is crucial for fitness, foraging animals must trade acquisition of high-quality resources against risk avoidance when the best resources occur in locations with high predation risk. Although optimality models predict the distance at which an animal should initiate vigilance and flight, many studies have shown that animals generally flee soon after detecting an approaching threat, supporting the ‘flush early and avoid the risk’ (FEAR) hypothesis. Despite this, flight behaviour varies markedly depending on context, suggesting some behavioural plasticity in the response of prey to a given threat. We evaluated the degree of plasticity in the flight responses of roe deer, Capreolus capreolus, a highly flexible species which thrives in human-dominated landscapes. Based on individually identifiable animals and a standardized flight initiation protocol, we measured the distance at which a deer detected an approaching threat, and the distance at which it subsequently initiated flight. Our results provide strong support for the FEAR hypothesis, suggesting that alert and flight responses are strongly coupled in roe deer. However, the perceived level of both risk (in terms of landscape openness and proximity to human infrastructure) and reward (in terms of habitat quality) influenced the time it took for a deer to detect an approaching threat, and the subsequent time for which the threat was tolerated prior to flight. Overall, our findings indicate that although roe deer minimize monitoring costs when assessing risk by fleeing early, they also adjust their monitoring and flight responses to the local risk–resource trade-off.

Establishing Community Of Practice In The University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria

The aim of this paper is to discuss the need for a community of practice in the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria. The requirements for the community of practice involve the personnel, the facilities, and the process of establishing it in the institution. A well cultivated community of practice will exhibit the three elements of Wenger’s model. Also, it would provide results as regards to problem solving, shared knowledge, and experience. In the era of recession and budget cuts, there is the need for library services to be maintained at its best. Effective and efficient innovative ways are applied in maintaining the library and the services it offers to its users. Sponsors should support the take-off. In addition, such goodwill will receive reward in terms of commendation once the group commences.

THE UNEXPLAINED AND IMPACT OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE NIGERIAN ECONOMY: AN ECONOMETRICS ANALYSIS

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)INTRODUCTION:Unemployment reduction is a major goal of every responsible government all over the globe. There is always friction in the market; as such, zero unemployment cannot be attained. There is unemployment where it is not possible for people who are eligible, able and willing to work cannot find jo bs (Osamwonyi, 2012). Unemployment is one of the greatest challenges facing Nigeria; it has a rising trend over the years. Unemployment in Nigeria is the proportion of labour force that was available for work but did not work in a period. Labour force in Nigeria is made up of all persons aged 15 - 64 years excluding students, retired persons, and housekeepers, not interested to work. (Mankiw, 1994), says unemployment stands for wasted resources.Unemployment has been on the increase, and (Ekpo, 2011) is of the view that Nigeria's unemployment situation is unacceptable. This paper is to find out what the causes of unemployment in Nigeria are the possibility of finding solutions as well as the unexplained unemployment, with respect to econometric study.Unemployment exists if the number of people who are willing to work and seeking jobs exceeds the number of declared vacancies (Abedi, 2011), (Anyanwu, 1995). People who are legally qualified, willing to work and seeking jobs cannot secure gainful employment in a situation. Thus, the supply of labour force exceeds the demand for labour force; it is a situation where there are more men or applicant than available jobs. Unemployment is the non -utilization of labour force in any productive activity for a reward in terms of wages or salaries (Ta Wiah, 2006).THEORETICAL UNDERPINNING:An unemployed person is someone who has the required qualification, ability and readiness to work and looks for work but cannot find one. Thus, the person is involved in the labour market with the mind of getting a look. This paper uses the model of L = f(u) i.e. labour force is a function of unemployed labour.Where: L = Labour forceU = Unemployed LabourWe are looking at Labour force and Unemployed labour force. Labou force is represented as y-variable and unemployed labour force is represented as x-variable.CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA:· Immobility of labour with respect to occupational and geographical, compounds the issues of unemployment.· Economic growth and development is slow, thus stagnated industrialization and employment generation.· Production made is capital intensive rather than labour intensive, this also encourages unemployment.· Wage structures in cities and the movement of people from villages to cities is a major cause of unemployment.· Poor educational facilities and poverty results in low level of education, cause unemployment.· Lack of educational curricula that tilt towards low-level white collared workers, concerned with low clerical work only.· Over-regulation in the economy hider's business expansion and this curtails job creation.· Wage rigidity causes unemployment; it is failure of wages to adjust until labour supply equals labour demand.UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA:In Nigeria, we Are faced with a lot of unconducive economic conditions like poor electricity, poor roads, poor communication system, insecurity, kidnapping, poor infrastructure, etc, have lead the close down of many organisations, and this have thrown many people into the labour market. Some years back so many textiles factories have closed down, and the trends still continues, and the chief cause is poor electricity, organisations rely heavily on generations to power their factories; and its results is inefficiency and increases unit cost of production and their produces are not competitive. It is interesting to note that the country is a dumping ground for all imports.Other factors that lead to unemployment in Nigeria include unconcerned attitude of local Governments to create employment, non-diversification of the economy. …

Principal components analysis of reward prediction errors in a reinforcement learning task

Models of reinforcement learning represent reward and punishment in terms of reward prediction errors (RPEs), quantitative signed terms describing the degree to which outcomes are better than expected (positive RPEs) or worse (negative RPEs). An electrophysiological component known as feedback related negativity (FRN) occurs at frontocentral sites 240–340ms after feedback on whether a reward or punishment is obtained, and has been claimed to neurally encode an RPE. An outstanding question however, is whether the FRN is sensitive to the size of both positive RPEs and negative RPEs. Previous attempts to answer this question have examined the simple effects of RPE size for positive RPEs and negative RPEs separately. However, this methodology can be compromised by overlap from components coding for unsigned prediction error size, or “salience”, which are sensitive to the absolute size of a prediction error but not its valence. In our study, positive and negative RPEs were parametrically modulated using both reward likelihood and magnitude, with principal components analysis used to separate out overlying components. This revealed a single RPE encoding component responsive to the size of positive RPEs, peaking at ~330ms, and occupying the delta frequency band. Other components responsive to unsigned prediction error size were shown, but no component sensitive to negative RPE size was found.

Unravelling reward value: the effect of host value on memory retention in Nasonia parasitic wasps

Learning can be instrumental in acquiring new skills or optimizing behaviour, but it is also costly in terms of energy and when maladaptive associations are formed: the balance between costs and benefits affects memory dynamics. Numerous studies have demonstrated that memory dynamics of animal species depend on the value of the reward during conditioning, even when animals are inexperienced with this reward. How an animal perceives reward value depends on a number of aspects, including the quantity or quality of the reward in terms of energy or fitness for the animal, the internal state of the animal and previous experience. The reliability of the learned association is another aspect, which can be assessed through the frequency of experiences, or through perception of inherent properties of the reward. The reward in oviposition learning of parasitic wasps is a host to parasitize. Different host species can differ in their reward value. This study focused on a specific aspect of reward value, namely host value, i.e. the number and size of emerging offspring, and tested the effect on oviposition learning in parasitic wasps of the genus Nasonia. We conditioned parasitic wasps of the species Nasonia vitripennis and Nasonia giraulti using three different host species as a reward, which differed greatly in their value as a host. However, for both parasitic wasp species, the resulting memory formation was independent of the value of the host. We discuss factors that may be responsible for this observation.

조직 간 파워 유형과 SCM 사용자만족

Companies are required to have adequate understanding and awareness of a partner company within the supply chain, together with the understanding of the imbalance consequent on power types. Therefore, this study intends to look into the power types and make clear their influence on confidence & commitment and causal relationship that is linked to SCM user satisfaction. The concrete research results are as follows. First, the result showed that none of the behavioral coercive, high-handed reward, and relative legitimacy in terms of Mediated power had a significant influence on confidence and commitment. Like this, the result explains that there is a limit to forcibleness power in forming a continuous, long-term relationship. Second, business expertise, professional information and value reference in terms of Non-Mediated power were all found to have a significant influence on confidence and commitment. This could be judged as having an intention of aggressively accepting a partner company's expertise, information strength and imitable culture, etc. Third, both confidence and commitment was found to have a significant influence on SCM user satisfaction.

Sweetness, Satiation, and Satiety

Satiation and satiety are central concepts in the understanding of appetite control and both have to do with the inhibition of eating. Satiation occurs during an eating episode and brings it to an end. Satiety starts after the end of eating and prevents further eating before the return of hunger. Enhancing satiation and satiety derived from foodstuffs was perceived as a means to facilitate weight control. Many studies have examined the various sensory, cognitive, postingestive, and postabsorptive factors that can potentially contribute to the inhibition of eating. In such studies, careful attention to study design is crucial for correct interpretation of the results. Although sweetness is a potent sensory stimulus of intake, sweet-tasting products produce satiation and satiety as a result of their volume as well as their nutrient and energy content. The particular case of energy intake from fluids has generated much research and it is still debated whether energy from fluids is as satiating as energy ingested from solid foods. This review discusses the satiating power of foods and drinks containing nutritive and nonnutritive sweeteners. The brain mechanisms of food reward (in terms of “liking” and “wanting”) are also addressed. Finally, we highlight the importance of reward homeostasis, which can help prevent eating in the absence of hunger, for the control of intake.