CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Sep 11;7(1):11128. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-11558-6.
The current study investigated monetary and social reward processing in children, adolescents and adults with adapted incentive-delay tasks and self-report questionnaires. Both tasks had three levels of reward magnitudes (no, low, and high). Qualified participants received 15 Chinese Yuan and an honor certificate as monetary and social rewards, respectively. The results indicated that both monetary and social rewards effectively speeded up responses for all three age groups as reward magnitude increased in the choice reaction time task. Among adolescents and adults, males exhibited faster responses in high reward than in low reward condition, while females responded equally fast in both conditions. Among children, girls responded faster to high reward than low reward condition. However, boys committed more errors than girls in low and high reward conditions, and they had exhibited more errors in high reward than that in no reward condition for social reward. Regarding the subjective ratings, both children and adolescents reported higher motivation for social reward than for monetary reward. These findings indicated that the males in the adolescent and adult groups were more sensitive to reward than were the females. Moreover, tangible and quantitative social reward had stronger incentive power than monetary reward among children and adolescents.
本研究采用改良的激励延迟任务和自我报告问卷，调查了儿童、青少年和成年人的货币和社会奖励处理。两个任务都有三个奖励金额级别（无、低和高）。合格的参与者分别获得 15 元人民币和荣誉证书作为货币和社会奖励。结果表明，在选择反应时任务中，随着奖励金额的增加，货币和社会奖励都有效地加快了所有三个年龄组的反应速度。在青少年和成年人中，男性在高奖励条件下的反应速度快于低奖励条件，而女性在两种条件下的反应速度相同。在儿童中，女孩对高奖励的反应速度快于低奖励。然而，男孩在低奖励和高奖励条件下的错误比女孩多，而在社会奖励的高奖励条件下的错误比无奖励条件下的错误多。关于主观评价，儿童和青少年都报告说社会奖励比金钱奖励更有动力。这些发现表明，青少年和成年男性比女性对奖励更敏感。此外，在儿童和青少年中，有形的、定量的社会奖励比金钱奖励更有激励作用。
