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Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

sciencebulletin.org

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Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#3
post #2

Interesting. But isn't this almost the definition of depression?

I think a better take away is the reverse. If you are rewarding children in your class (or your kids) and one is not enthusiastic then you should take note there might be a problem (essentially the first sentence of the article).

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#4
post #3
post #2

Interesting. But isn't this almost the definition of depression?

I think a better take away is the reverse. If you are rewarding children in your class (or your kids) and one is not enthusiastic then you should take note there might be a problem (essentially the first sentence of the article).

I'd be very careful here. Perhaps the particular reward is not perceived by the child as a reward? I can think of any number of things that one party might perceive as a reward that would be, to me, uncomfortable or meh.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#6
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better take away is the reverse. If you are rewarding children in your class (or your kids) and one is not enthusiastic then you should take note there might be a problem (essentially the first sentence of the article).

I'd be very careful here. Perhaps the particular reward is not perceived by the child as a reward? I can think of any number of things that one party might perceive as a reward that would be, to me, uncomfortable or meh.

Interesting. Instead, kid enters the room, you tell them that they will be sitting there anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours, depending on how long the experiment should be. They get to choose a sequence of doors. At each step, the door can either contain +10 minutes or -10 minutes, representing the number of minutes which will be either added to or subtracted from their experiment duration, respectively.

My guess is that the depressed/bored children will now respond a little bit better to this experiment. It's just a guess -- but I think depressed/bored kids would tend to avoid spending time being bored in a little lab room.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#7
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better take away is the reverse. If you are rewarding children in your class (or your kids) and one is not enthusiastic then you should take note there might be a problem (essentially the first sentence of the article).

I'd be very careful here. Perhaps the particular reward is not perceived by the child as a reward? I can think of any number of things that one party might perceive as a reward that would be, to me, uncomfortable or meh.

The 'take note' part is a yes.

One or two signals is not a pattern, but it can mean to start looking for one.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#9

Hm, can someone help me figure out what this is saying more rigorously? Specifically, is it saying Pr(Dislikes Rewards | Depressed) is high, or is it saying Pr(Depressed | Dislikes Rewards) is high, or both?

The article doesn't say anything about Pr(Dislikes Rewards), but rather claims to have measured P(Diminished Response to Rewards | Clinical Depression Diagnosis) > P(Diminished Response to Rewards | !Diagnosis).

It's an 84 person study, done using EEG (a very rough measure of electrical activity in the brain), claiming a result largely related neurotransmitter release (ie not the sort of thing EEGs are usually used to measure). You should take their claims with a huge helping of salt.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#10

Hm, can someone help me figure out what this is saying more rigorously? Specifically, is it saying Pr(Dislikes Rewards | Depressed) is high, or is it saying Pr(Depressed | Dislikes Rewards) is high, or both?

The first one. They sorted the kids into Depressed and not-Depressed before measuring the reward response.

The second probability depends on the relative sizes of all four quadrants and your definition of "high". The truth of statement one does imply that it's higher, but how much higher is not discussed.

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