This is a simple card-sorting task that measures over four trials the extent to which participants increase their speed of performance when reinforced via small financial rewards compared with non-reinforcement trials (see Table 1 for further details).
According to J.A. Gray's theory, non-reinforcement activates the behavioural inhibition system which in turn causes anxiety.
Extinction following positively reinforced operant conditioning reduces response frequency, at least in part through the aversive or frustrative effects of non-reinforcement.
Patients in the reinforcement group had less than half the incidence of new vertebral fractures as in the non-reinforcement group.
Other studies have shown stronger emotional responses to non-reinforcement in children with ADHD [ 6- 8], but very weak differences relative to controls in extinction performance [ 7].
Further comparisons revealed that at baseline, A1+ participants were slower in card sorting under reinforcement conditions versus non-reinforcement conditions, compared with A1- participants, F 1,71) = 6.98, p = 0.010, η p 2 = 0.089.
Feeding n-3 PUFAs to the ADHD model rats induced sex-specific changes in reinforcement-motivated behaviour and a sex-independent change in non-reinforcement-associated behaviour, which correlated with changes in presynaptic striatal monoamine and amino acid signalling, respectively.
In addition to the biomarker follow-up, persistence was measured directly with electronically monitored pill dispensers; overall persistence over 1 year was 77% in the reinforcement group and 80% in the non-reinforcement group.
Because large food items were both positive and negative in the present experiment, the learning effect observed in the Gap/Large-food condition could not be attributed to non-reinforcement cuing by large food items.
Upper-bound adjustment is analogous to the "limited hold" procedure used in DRL, where non-reinforcement of the longest IRTs is intended to discourage task delinquency; it allows for a direct comparison between LHT and DRL (with limited hold) performance.
Relatedly, the PIT effect can be abolished more readily by discriminative extinction training where the stimulus signals the non-reinforcement of a response than by Pavlovian extinction training where the stimulus signals the non-occurrence of the reinforcer 16, 21– 21.
