A dimensional measure of safety behavior: A non-dichotomous assessment of costly avoidance in human fear conditioning

Safety behavior prevents the occurrence of threat, thus it is typically considered adaptive. However, safety behavior in anxiety-related disorders is often costly, and persists even the situation does not entail realistic threat. Individuals can engage in safety behavior to varying extents, however, these behaviors are typically measured dichotomously (i.e., to execute or not). To better understand the nuances of safety behavior, this study developed a dimensional measure of safety behavior that had a negative linear relationship with the admission of an aversive outcome. In two experiments, a Reward group receiving fixed or individually calibrated incentives competing with safety behavior showed reduced safety behavior than a Control group receiving no incentives. This allowed extinction learning to a previously learnt warning signal in the Reward group (i.e., updating the belief that this stimulus no longer signals threat). Despite the Reward group exhibited extinction learning, both groups showed a similar increase in fear to the warning signal once safety behavior was no longer available. This null group difference was due to some participants in the Reward group not incentivized enough to disengage from safety behavior. Dimensional assessment revealed a dissociation between low fear but substantial safety behavior to a safety signal in the Control group. This suggests that low-cost safety behavior does not accurately reflect the fear-driven processes, but also other non-fear-driven processes, such as cost (i.e., engage in safety behavior merely because it bears little to no cost). Pinpointing both processes is important for furthering the understanding of safety behavior.

A dimensional measure of safety behavior: Validation of a novel, non-dichotomous measure of avoidance in human fear conditioning

Safety behaviour in anxiety disorders is often maladaptive given it prevents patients to disconfirm unrealistic threat beliefs (protection from extinction). These behaviours range from mild to excessive, however, are commonly examined as binary responses. The current study aimed to validate a dimensional measure of safety behaviour. After acquiring differential conditioned fear to a warning cue (CS+) and a safety cue (CS-), participants acquired dimensional safety behaviour that had a negative linear relationship with the admission of an aversive outcome (0-100% omission). Next, a Reward group received a fixed (Experiment 1) or an individually calibrated monetary incentive (Experiment 2) for non-avoidance while a Control group received no incentive. Overall, the paradigm replicated well-established effects. Intensity of safety behaviour strongly aligned with threat expectancy. The Reward group showed less frequent safety behaviour which initiated extinction learning to CS+. Surprisingly, no group differences in protection from extinction were observed. Post-hoc analyses revealed that overall group differences were biased by some high avoiders in the Reward group who constantly engaged in safety behaviour. Novel findings revealed that despite similar conditioned fear to CS-, the Control group showed stronger safety behaviour to it. This suggests that other processes besides fear are involved in low-cost avoidance

Reward does not facilitate visual perceptual learning until sleep occurs

A growing body of evidence indicates that visual perceptual learning (VPL) is enhanced by reward provided during training. Another line of studies has shown that sleep following training also plays a role in facilitating VPL, an effect known as the offline performance gain of VPL. However, whether the effects of reward and sleep interact on VPL remains unclear. Here, we show that reward interacts with sleep to facilitate offline performance gains of VPL. First, we demonstrated a significantly larger offline performance gain over a 12-h interval including sleep in a reward group than that in a no-reward group. However, the offline performance gains over the 12-h interval without sleep were not significantly different with or without reward during training, indicating a crucial interaction between reward and sleep in VPL. Next, we tested whether neural activations during posttraining sleep were modulated after reward was provided during training. Reward provided during training enhanced rapid eye movement (REM) sleep time, increased oscillatory activities for reward processing in the prefrontal region during REM sleep, and inhibited neural activation in the untrained region in early visual areas in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and REM sleep. The offline performance gains were significantly correlated with oscillatory activities of visual processing during NREM sleep and reward processing during REM sleep in the reward group but not in the no-reward group. These results suggest that reward provided during training becomes effective during sleep, with excited reward processing sending inhibitory signals to suppress noise in visual processing, resulting in larger offline performance gains over sleep.

Motivated for near impossibility: How task type and reward modulates intrinsic motivation and the striatal activation for an extremely difficult task

Economic and decision-making theories suppose that people would disengage from an extremely difficult task, because such a task does not implicate any normative utility values (i.e. success probability is almost zero). However, humans are often motivated for an extremely challenging task with little chance of success, even without any extrinsic incentives. The current study aimed to address how the nature of the task (luck vs. skill) and the presence of extrinsic rewards modulate this challenge-based motivation, and its neural correlates. Participants played a game-like, skill-based task with three different probabilities of success (i.e., high, moderate, and extremely-low chance of success), in one group without performance-based rewards (no-reward group) and the other group with performance-based monetary rewards (reward group). Participants in the third group played a similar task but the reward outcome was determined in a probabilistic manner (gambling group). Participants in the no-reward group showed increased intrinsic motivation, as the chance of success decreased (i.e. the task becomes more difficult) even if the task was almost impossible to achieve. On the other hand, the reward group exhibited the highest intrinsic motivation when the task had a moderate chance of success, and participants in the gambling group showed decreased intrinsic motivation as the chance of success decreased. The ventral striatum and the ventral pallidum also showed similar patterns of activation. These results suggest that, both at the behavioral and neural levels, people are intrinsically motivated to challenge a nearly impossible task, but only when the task requires certain skills and extrinsic rewards are not available.

Reward does not facilitate visual perceptual learning until sleep occurs

ABSTRACTA growing body of evidence indicates that visual perceptual learning (VPL) is enhanced by reward provided during training. Another line of studies has shown that sleep following training also plays a role in facilitating VPL, an effect known as the offline performance gain of VPL. However, whether the effects of reward and sleep interact on VPL remains unclear. Here, we show that reward interacts with sleep to facilitate offline performance gains of VPL. First, we demonstrated a significantly larger offline performance gain over a 12-h interval including sleep in a reward group than that in a No-reward group. However, the offline performance gains over the 12-h interval without sleep were not significantly different with or without reward during training, indicating a crucial interaction between reward and sleep in VPL. Next, we tested whether neural activations during posttraining sleep were modulated after reward was provided during training. Reward provided during training enhanced REM sleep time, increased oscillatory activities for reward processing in the prefrontal region during REM sleep, and inhibited neural activation in the untrained region in early visual areas in NREM and REM sleep. The offline performance gains were significantly correlated with oscillatory activities of visual processing during NREM sleep and reward processing during REM sleep in the reward group but not in the No-reward group. These results suggest that reward provided during training becomes effective during sleep, with excited reward processing sending inhibitory signals to suppress noise in visual processing, resulting in larger offline performance gains over sleep.Significance statementIndependent lines of research have shown that visual perceptual learning (VPL) is improved by reward or sleep. Here, we show that reward provided during training increased offline performance gains of VPL over sleep. Moreover, during posttraining sleep, reward was associated with longer REM sleep, increased activity in reward processing in the prefrontal region during REM sleep, and decreased activity in the untrained region of early visual areas during NREM and REM sleep. Offline performance gains were correlated with modulated oscillatory activity in reward processing during REM sleep and visual processing during NREM sleep. These results suggest that reward provided during training becomes effective on VPL through the interaction between reward and visual processing during sleep after training.

Monetary Effects on Fear Conditioning

Previous research has found that the loss of money as a negative secondary reinforcer was as effective as a primary reinforcer during fear conditioning. The purpose of the present study was to explore the effect of monetary gain as a positive secondary reinforcer in fear conditioning. Participants were assigned to a high-reward group or low-reward group. Three kinds of squares prompting non-compensation shock, compensation shock, and no shock were presented. Skin conductance responses (SCRs) and self-ratings were recorded. The results revealed that (a) both SCRs and self-ratings in the compensation shock condition were lower than in the non-compensation shock condition, suggesting that money might block the learning stage of fear conditioning; and (b) a higher ratio of fear reduction was present in self-rating when compared to SCRs, suggesting that people might overstate the utility of money, subjectively. Monetary effects, the effects of different amounts of money, and the differences between subjective and physiological levels are discussed.

Influence of Training with and without Reward on Visual Inspector’s Performance in 3 Dimension Model

This research was aimed to improve an inspector’s performance on the training through 3D model by motivation technique. The subjects were divided into 3 groups; the control, the feedback training, and feedback training with reward groups. The subjects participated in the last group would get rewards or punishments such as money given or deducted during the test with 3D model software with Thai characters and Roman characters representing defects and backgrounds. According to the experiment, the performance in terms of speed and accuracy in detecting defects in training with reward group increased. In other words, feedback with motivation training could make visual inspectors spend less time detecting defects to their minimum because motivation attracted them in the experiment. Therefore, the time spent seeking defects in this group decreased. The performance of training with reward group is higher than other groups which showed the statistical significance at the .01 level.

“Faking Good” as a Problem in Comparative Studies of Heroin Addicts

The tendency for members of deviant groups to answer social attitude scales in a socially desirable direction was evaluated using a group of heroin addicts. Heroin addicts were first compared with a standard comparison group. Three groups were then formed: (1) a stress group, which was required to complete the forms, (2) a reward group, which was given cigarettes for completing the forms, and (3) a volunteer group, which was simply requested to complete the forms. The groups responded similarly on 4 of 7 factors but showed significant differences on 3 factors. The volunteer group responded in the direction of high social desirability. As a group, the addicts did not differ markedly from the standard comparison group. It was concluded that deviant groups might give more truthful responses to social attitude scales if they are told to complete them as part of the program in which they may be taking part.

Reward, Punishment and Reversal on a Mirror-Tracing Task

In an attempt to “equate” punishment and reward, a situation was devised where the informational content, intensity and method of delivery were the same. On a mirror-tracing task both punishment and reward affected Ss' performance. The initial effect of punishment was more pronounced than the initial effect of reward. When Ss were told to reverse the direction of tracing, degradation of performance was less for the punished group than for the reward group.

Effectiveness of Direct Reward and Modeling in Establishment of Standards of Excellence

Two procedures, modeling and direct reward, were presented as possible methods for studying one aspect of achievement behavior, namely, the tendency to set standards of excellence. A comparison of these two procedures was made to determine their relative efficacy for inducing the hypothesized standards of excellence. 84 boys (ages 7 to 11 yr.) were tested under 1 of the 6 conditions of a 2 × 3 factorial design. The two main variables were (a) the method used to establish a standard of excellence (modeling or direct reward) and (b) the level of standard that was established (low, high, or none). An analysis of the results in terms of a standard setting score (based on the pattern of self-reward) showed that both the direct-reward groups and the modeling groups exhibited standard setting. The direct-reward group, if anything, showed more standard setting than the modeling group did, due mainly to the low level of standard setting in the high-standard modeling group. These results were interpreted as providing support for a social-learning explanation of the acquisition of standards of excellence in the development of achievement motivation.