The effects of performance‐based rewards on neurophysiological correlates of stimulus, error, and feedback processing in children with ADHD

Abstract

Rewards have been shown to improve behavior and cognitive processes implicated in ADHD, but the information processing mechanisms by which these improvements occur remain unclear. We examined the effect of performance-based rewards on ERPs related to processing of the primary task stimuli, errors, and feedback in children with ADHD and typically developing controls. Participants completed a flanker task containing blocks with and without performance-based rewards. Children with ADHD showed reduced amplitude of ERPs associated with processing of the flanker stimuli (P3) and errors (ERN, Pe), but did not differ in feedback-processing (FRN). Rewards enhanced flanker-related P3 amplitude similarly across groups and error-related Pe amplitude differentially for children with ADHD. These findings suggest that rewards may improve cognitive deficits in children with ADHD through enhanced processing of relevant stimuli and increased error evaluation.

Probabilistic reward learning in adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—An electrophysiological study

“…"Press left if central arrow points left.") in the traditional flanker task used by Rosch and Hawk (2013). Here, no deviations from expectancy occurred, yielding comparable FRNs in ADHD patients and controls.…”

“…Considering clinical characteristics, results remain inconclusive across studies: Rosch and Hawk (2013), Holroyd et al (2008) and van Meel et al (2005van Meel et al ( , 2011 all studied children of the same age (8-13 years) predominantly diagnosed with the combined subtype of ADHD (16 out of 18 in the van Meel samples and exclusively ADHD combined subtype in the other studies). Thus, discrepant findings might primarily relate to differences in task characteristics as discussed above.…”

“…The findings on the FRN in ADHD patients are sparse and the results and the methods applied heterogeneous: the FRN was reported to be specifically more pronounced in response to unfavorable performance feedback during a guessing task (van Meel et al, 2005) and to abstract performance feedback following the physical reception of actual monetary rewards (Holroyd et al, 2008), entirely absent during a time production task (van Meel et al, 2011) and comparable to the FRN observed in healthy controls during a flanker task involving performance-based rewards (Rosch and Hawk, 2013). Our results add to these reports in a number of ways:…”

“…In children with ADHD, the FRN was either more pronounced in response to unfavorable performance feedback during a guessing task (van Meel et al, 2005) and to abstract performance feedback following the physical reception of actual monetary rewards (Holroyd et al, 2008), entirely absent during a time production task (van Meel et al, 2011) or did not differ from the FRN observed in controls during a flanker task (Rosch and Hawk, 2013). Regarding the P300, adults with ADHD showed reduced P300 modulation by reward magnitude during a gambling task (Ibanez et al, 2014), while children with and without ADHD showed comparable reward-associated enhancement of the P300 during a flanker task (Rosch and Hawk, 2013). The P200 in response to feedback has been reported to be inconspicuous (Groen et al, 2008(Groen et al, , 2013 or enhanced for unfavorable performance feedback in ADHD children (van Meel et al, 2005).…”

“…One of them relates to task-induced reward expectations: Van Meel et al (2005) and Holroyd et al (2008) used guessing tasks with random presentation of reward and non-reward. Rosch and Hawk (2013) employed a flanker task with deterministic stimulus-response contingencies and van Meel et al (2011) a time production not involving clear reward expectations as difficulty is dynamically adjusted to the participant's performance level.…”