Reward dominance: associations with anxiety, conduct problems, and psychopathy in children.
The associations between children's behavior and their performance on a task with a steadily increasing ratio of punished to rewarded responses was investigated in a group of clinic-referred (n = 92) and normal control (n = 40) children between the ages of 6 and 13. Clinic-referred children with an anxiety disorder played significantly fewer trials than clinic-referred children without an anxiety disorder but the response style of the anxious children did not differ from that of a normal control group. Children with severe conduct problems who had no anxiety disorder played more trials than (a) children with severe conduct problems and a comorbid anxiety disorder, (b) nonanxious children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and (c) children in the normal control group. The strongest evidence for the reward dominant response style was for nonanxious subjects with elevations on a measure of psychopathic features, irrespective of whether they also had conduct problems and irrespective of whether they were clinic-referred.
O'Brien
B S
BS
Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa 35487, USA.
Frick
P J
PJ
D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011678:Punishment; D012201:Reward; D012309:Risk-Taking