Scaling Incentives: Determining Preference and Indifference in 8- to lO-Year-Old Girls

The present study adopted procedures similar to those used by Logan (1965) to determine choice behavior in children. The objective was to provide an improved methodology in delay-of-gratification studies, thus avoiding the problems associated with scaling different kinds of rewards, and to provide approximate functions relating a delay-of-token reward to choice behavior. Thus, 7 girls aged 8 to 10 years were exposed to a choice paradigm in which a larger reward (2 tokens) was pitted against a smaller reward (1 token); access to these rewards was delayed a certain period of time. The results of this experiment showed that as the delay of the larger reward increased, preference for the smaller reward increased in an orderly fashion. The finding that delay shifted preference from the larger to the smaller reward is discussed in relation to current theory. The results of this experiment also provide evidence for the utility of tokens in scaling incentives for choice studies.     

奖赏敏感性在冲动性饮食行为中的作用

肥胖会导致癌症、心脏病、糖尿病等诸多健康问题,而冲动性饮食是肥胖的一个重要影响因素。厘清奖赏敏感性在冲动性饮食中的作用,有助于深入理解冲动性饮食行为。本文介绍了奖赏敏感性的概念、涉及的主要研究领域、生物学基础及测量;整理归纳出奖赏敏感性影响冲动性饮食的三种可能路径:通过注意力偏向影响对享乐性食品的感知、影响消费欲望及随后的自我控制;文章最后指出了基于奖赏敏感性对冲动性饮食进行拓展研究的可能方向。     

Involvement of the rat anterior cingulate cortex in control of instrumental responses guided by reward expectancy

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays a critical role in stimulus-reinforcement learning and reward-guided selection of actions. Here we conducted a series of experiments to further elucidate the role of the ACC in instrumental behavior involving effort-based decision-making and instrumental learning guided by reward-predictive stimuli. In Experiment 1, rats were trained on a cost-benefit T-maze task in which they could either choose to climb a barrier to obtain a high reward (four pellets) in one arm or a low reward (two pellets) in the other with no barrier present. In line with previous studies, our data reveal that rats with quinolinic acid lesions of the ACC selected the response involving less work and smaller reward. Experiment 2 demonstrates that breaking points of instrumental performance under a progressive ratio schedule were similar in sham-lesioned and ACC-lesioned rats. Thus, lesions of the ACC did not interfere with the effort a rat is willing to expend to obtain a specific reward in this test. In a subsequent task, we examined effort-based decision-making in a lever-press task where rats had the choice between pressing a lever to receive preferred food pellets under a progressive ratio schedule, or free feeding on a less preferred food, i.e. lab chow. Results show that sham- and ACC-lesioned animals had similar breaking points and ingested comparable amounts of less-preferred food. Together, the results of Experiment 1 and 2 suggest that the ACC plays a role in evaluating how much effort to expend for reward; however, the ACC is not necessary in all situations requiring an assessment of costs and benefits. In Experiment 3 we investigated learning and reversal learning of instrumental responses guided by reward predictive stimuli. A reaction time (RT) task demanding conditioned lever release was used in which the upcoming reward magnitude (five vs. one food pellet) was signalled in advance by discriminative visual stimuli. Results revealed that rats with ACC lesions were able to discriminate reward magnitude-predictive stimuli and to adapt instrumental behavior to reversed stimulus-reward magnitude contingencies. Thus, in a simple discrimination task as used here, the ACC appears not to be required to discriminate reward magnitude-predictive stimuli and to use the learned significance of the stimuli to guide instrumental behavior.     

A Simple Measure of Interviewer and Interviewee Speech Durations

A hypothesis that peer pressure affects delay-of-gratification behavior was tested by comparing the private vs. public responses of Cree children to the offer of an immediate reward or a larger delayed reward. One group of children was twice tested in private. Another group was first tested in private and then in public. In both testings approximately 65% of the control group chose an immediate reward. The experimental group, however, although preferring an immediate reward in private, in public elected to go along with the choices of their classmates, many reversing themselves and choosing a delayed rather than immediate reward.     

The effects of reward and perception of competency upon intrinsic motivation

The effects of contingent and noncontingent reward upon subsequent performance on a decoding task were compared. The results indicated that reward had an overall detrimental effect. There was some evidence that contingent reward was more detrimental than noncontingent reward. The informational aspect of the reward was also varied. Subjects were made to feel either more competent than, equal to, or less competent than the average student. The competency manipulation did not affect subsequent performance. It did affect subjects' willingness to participate in a similar experiment in the future.     

Can lemurs learn to deceive? A study in the black lemur (Eulemur macaco)

Deceptive behavior in primates has been the focus of a number of studies. Nevertheless, such abilities have never been demonstrated in prosimians. The authors' goal was to analyze possible deception in lemurs according to a paradigm used with simians. Three black lemurs were trained to communicate about the location of a hidden reward with a cooperative trainer. Afterward, when a 2nd trainer and lemurs competed to gain access to the reward, each subject differentially adapted its learned behavior to the context. Their performances with the cooperative trainer remained stable while they showed various behavioral adjustments when faced to the competitive trainer: 1 subject refused to participate, another preferentially withheld information, and the 3rd sometimes pointed deceptively to obtain the reward.     

A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF LEADER REWARD BEHAVIOR, SUBORDINATE EXPECTANCIES, AND SATISFACTION

Positive and punitive leader reward behavior and their longitudinal relationships with subordinate expectancies and satisfaction were studied in a large manufacturing organization. Longitudinal data were collected approximately one year apart from 132 managerial, engineering and supervisory employees. Cross-lagged correlations suggested that positive leader reward behavior was causally related to higher effort-to-performance expectancy, as well as higher satisfaction with work, opportunities for promotion and overall satisfaction. Punitive leader reward behavior was suggested to be causally related to lower satisfaction with work, supervision and overall satisfaction. Implications were discussed for the use of leader reward behavior and for future research.     

The Effects of Salesperson Need for Achievement and Sales Manager Leader Reward Behavior

A sample of 312 salespeople from diverse industries was used to develop a model that examined the influence of salesperson need for achievement and sales manager positive leader reward behavior on several key organizational outcomes. The organizational outcome variables examined were goal acceptance, sales performance, and organizational commitment. The results suggest that a salesperson’s need for achievement may lead to higher performance, but not necessarily commitment to the organization. However, positive leader reward behavior may strengthen a salesperson’s organizational commitment. The findings, along with suggestions for sales managers, are discussed.     

The relationship of social power to visual displays of dominance between men and women

Two studies, with undergraduate subjects, investigated how sex and situation-specific power factors relate to visual behavior in mixed-sex interactions. The power variable in Study 1 was expert power, based on differential knowledge. Mixed-sex dyads were formed such that members had complementary areas of expertise. In Study 2, reward power was manipulated. Consistent with expectation states theory, both men and women high in expertise or reward power displayed high visual dominance, defined as the ratio of looking while speaking to looking while listening. Specifically, men and women high in expertise or reward power exhibited equivalent levels of looking while speaking and looking while listening. High visual dominance ratios have been associated with high social power in previous research. Both men and women low in expertise or reward power looked more while listening than while speaking, producing a relatively low visual dominance ratio. In conditions in which men and women did not possess differential expertise or reward power, visual behavior was related to sex. Men displayed visual behavior similar to their patterns in the high expertise and high reward power conditions, whereas women exhibited visual behavior similar to their patterns in the low expertise and low reward power conditions. The results demonstrate how social expectations are reflected in nonverbal power displays.     

Asymmetrical consequences of behavioral change through reward and punishment

Previous research (Greitemeyer & Weiner, 2003 ) has demonstrated that compliance, because of an anticipated reward is attributed more to the person than compliance because of an anticipated punishment. The present research extended these findings to an educational context. Three studies revealed that parents who ask their children to change inappropriate behaviors are more likely to ascribe their children's improvement to the child, if the child was promised a reward, rather than threatened, to receive a punishment if the child did not improve. Moreover, because a child's improved behavior is more likely to be ascribed to the child given a reward as compared to a punishment, parents expect that rewards (as opposed to punishments) are more likely to sustain improved behavior, when the incentive is no longer offered. Finally, participants report to be more likely to induce behavioral change through reward rather than punishment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autonomic conditioning to monetary and social stimuli and aggression in children

Poor conditioning to punishment, such as loud tones or electric shock, has been proposed as an important factor involved in the etiology of aggressive and psychopathic behavior. However, it is not known whether the association holds when monetary or social stimulus is used as the unconditioned stimulus, and if aggressive individuals also have impaired conditioning to rewards. In this study, skin conductance responses in a conditioning task involving both monetary/social reward and punishment as unconditioned stimuli were assessed in 340 male and female 8‐ to 9‐year‐old children from the community. Children reported their reactive and proactive aggression using the Reactive and Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ; Raine et al., 2006). Results showed that monetary/social reward and punishment were effective in eliciting physiological classical conditioning in children, and that reduced reward conditioning was associated with high levels of proactive aggression in particular. Findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between reactive and proactive aggression when examining antisocial behavior in children, and suggest that reward‐oriented treatment programs may not be effective for children with more proactive, instrumental aggressive behavior.

     

Situational moderators of leader reward and punishment behaviors: fact or fiction?

One assumption shared by many contemporary models of leadership is that situational variables moderate the relationships between leader behaviors and subordinate responses. Recently, however, R. J. House and J. L. Baetz (1979 in B. Staw & L. Cummings, Eds., Research in Organizational Behavior (Vol. 1), Greenwich, Connecticut, JAI Press) have suggested that the effects of some leader traits and behaviors may be relatively invariant; that is, have the same effects in a variety of situations. One possible class of leader behaviors which may have relatively consistent effects across situations are those known as leader reward and punishment behaviors. The first goal of the research reported here was to increase our understanding of the relationships between leader contingent and noncontingent reward and punishment behaviors and subordinate responses. Contingent reward behavior was found to have the most pronounced relationships with subordinate performance and satisfaction, followed by noncontingent punishment behavior. Neither leader noncontingent reward nor contingent punishment behavior were found to be related to either subordinate performance or satisfaction, with the exception that noncontingent reward behavior was negatively related to subordinates' satisfaction with work. The second goal of the research was to examine the effects of a variety of potential moderators on the relationships between leader reward and punishment behaviors and subordinate responses. The results of this study suggest that the relationships between leader reward and punishment behaviors and subordinates' performance are relatively free of moderating effects.     

Learning reward expectations in honeybees

The aim of this study was to test whether honeybees develop reward expectations. In our experiment, bees first learned to associate colors with a sugar reward in a setting closely resembling a natural foraging situation. We then evaluated whether and how the sequence of the animals’ experiences with different reward magnitudes changed their later behavior in the absence of reinforcement and within an otherwise similar context. We found that the bees that had experienced increasing reward magnitudes during training assigned more time to flower inspection 24 and 48 h after training. Our design and behavioral measurements allowed us to uncouple the signal learning and the nutritional aspects of foraging from the effects of subjective reward values. We thus found that the animals behaved differently neither because they had more strongly associated the related predicting signals nor because they were fed more or faster. Our results document for the first time that honeybees develop long-term expectations of reward; these expectations can guide their foraging behavior after a relatively long pause and in the absence of reinforcement, and further experiments will aim toward an elucidation of the neural mechanisms involved in this form of learning.     

The development of adaptive choice in a self-control paradigm

Sixteen girls (ages 4, 6, 9, and 12) performed on concurrent-chain schedules of reinforcement. The initial links were variable-interval 10-s schedules, and the terminal links offered a long delay (20, 30, 40, or 50 s) followed by two tokens or a short delay (10 s) followed by one token. Tokens were used to buy toys and sweets. The effect of increasing the delay to the large reward differed significantly across age groups. Whereas 6- and 9-year-olds maintained a strong preference for the larger, more delayed reward under all delay conditions, half of the 4-year-olds and all the 12-year-olds showed increasing preference for the small reward as the delay to the large reward increased. The results suggest a two-stage account of the development of self-control. In the first stage, behavior is increasingly controlled by reward size, as children learn how to wait for delayed rewards, and in the second phase behavior is increasingly controlled by reward rate, as children learn when it is in fact profitable to wait.     

Effects of anonymity on antisocial behavior committed by individuals

The present study examined association between anonymity and antisocial individual behavior without any influence from the presence of others. Anonymity was operationally defined as consisting of two components, nonidentifiability and nonaccountability. Antisocial behavior was defined as rule-breaking behavior seeking a monetary reward. It was hypothesized that anonymity would increase antisocial behavior among individuals. Undergraduate students (20 men, 50 women) were recruited from two psychology classes and were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions (Anonymous, Nonidentifiable, Nonaccountable, and Nonanonymous) to examine whether they would violate game rules to obtain the monetary reward through anonymity. Only participants in the Anonymous condition violated the rules to obtain the reward. Implications for the effects of anonymity on antisocial individual behavior are discussed.     

Reward Responsivity in Parenting: Development of a Novel Measure in Mothers of Young Children

The purpose of the current study was to develop and evaluate a measure of maternal reward responsivity in parenting. Deficits in reward responsivity, a common feature of depression, may contribute to maladaptive parenting behaviors. Reward responsivity is an individual difference in reactivity to pleasurable stimuli and represents a key motivational component that could contribute to the frequency and quality of mothers’ interactions with their infants. However, there is currently no measure of reward responsivity in parenting, which would be necessary to evaluate the link between mother reward responsivity, behaviors towards their infant, and infant behavior. Therefore, the current study reports on the development and initial evaluation of a self-report measure of reward responsivity in parenting, the Mother Inventory of Reward Experience (MIRE). We evaluated the MIRE among 200 mothers (M?=?28.45, SD?=?5.50) recruited from a pediatric primary care center. After item analysis, 22 items were retained and displayed high internal consistency reliability and test re-test reliability. Convergent validity was established via a significant correlation with global reward responsivity. Concurrent validity was established via significant correlations with depressive symptoms, parenting stress, and child behavior problems. Incremental validity of the MIRE over a measure of global reward responsivity was supported. These results support the reliability and validity of the MIRE as a measure of reward responsivity in parenting.     

Dorsal striatum responses to reward and punishment: Effects of valence and magnitude manipulations

The goal of this research was to further our understanding of how the striatum responds to the delivery of affective feedback. Previously, we had found that the striatum showed a pattern of sustained activation after presentation of a monetary reward, in contrast to a decrease in the hemodynamic response after a punishment. In this study, we tested whether the activity of the striatum could be modulated by parametric variations in the amount of financial reward or punishment. We used an event-related fMRI design in which participants received large or small monetary rewards or punishments after performance in a gambling task. A parametric ordering of conditions was observed in the dorsal striatum according to both magnitude and valence. In addition, an early response to the presentation of feedback was observed and replicated in a second experiment with increased temporal resolution. This study further implicates the dorsal striatum as an integral component of a reward circuitry responsible for the control of motivated behavior, serving to code for such feedback properties as valence and magnitude.     

Humans’ folk physics is not enough to explain variations in their tool-using behavior

Two experiments examined adult humans’ folk physics (i.e., their naturally occurring and spontaneous understanding of the physical world) using variations of trap-table problems used to study chimpanzees’ folk physics. When presented with these problems, people unnecessarily avoided retrieving a reward by pulling a rake on the side of a table with a trapping hole—even though it was highly unlikely that the hole would trap the reward. However, when the distance between the reward and the trap was sufficiently large and the distance that the reward had to travel to be retrieved was sufficiently short, people preferred to retrieve a reward by pulling the rake on the side of the table with the trap. These results underscore that behavior during tool-use tasks has many possible causes, only one of which might be a subject’s folk physics.     

不同社会情境对儿童奖惩分配公平性的影响

为探讨社会排斥和社会接纳情境下儿童奖惩分配公平性,研究采用个体-偶然排斥范式和第三方奖惩分配范式,对8~9岁儿童奖惩分配公平性行为和奖惩分配公平性判断进行研究,结果发现：（1）社会排斥组被试的奖惩分配公平性行为显著多于社会接纳组,奖惩分配不公平性行为显著少于社会接纳组。9岁组被试的奖惩分配公平性行为显著多于8岁组,奖惩分配不公平性行为显著少于8岁组;（2）社会排斥组被试的奖惩分配公平性判断显著高于社会接纳组,9岁组被试的奖惩分配公平性判断显著高于8岁组,奖惩分配不公平性判断显著低于8岁组。结论：社会情境影响儿童的奖惩分配公平性,在排斥情境下,8~9岁儿童的奖惩分配公平性明显提升;8~9岁儿童的奖惩分配公平性随年龄增长有上升趋势。     

THE EFFICACY OF AN ALL-POSITIVE APPROACH TO CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

This study addressed the question of whether an all-positive approach to classroom management can be effective. The on-task behavior and academic performance of eight, second- and third-grade children with behavior problems were examined. Results indicated that an all-positive approach that relied primarily on praise was not effective. However, when an individualized reward system was used, the children's rates of on-task behavior were high and stable. Similar effects were observed for academic productivity. Thus, a classroom can be managed using only positive consequences. However, to be successful, such an approach may require a considerable amount of teacher time and effort, particularly potent, varied and individual rewards, and high rates of appropriate behavior previously established using both positive and negative consequences.