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Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

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Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#31

Post by zeroer »

meriobrudar wrote: post #27

Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled t…

I don't have a reference offhand, but there's research that indicates that depressed people have more realistic outlooks on life, as contrasted with 'normal' people who are hopelessly optimistic. Maybe the depressed kids figured out quicker that the whole study was pointless?

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#32

Post by hueving »

ggggtez wrote: post #30
meriobrudar wrote: post #27

Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled t…

So you're saying you didn't read the article then. Or you don't believe that gambling excites people. I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result.

>I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result.

Why would the OP try to reproduce something he/she doesn't consider scientific?

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#33

Post by wfunction »

dlss wrote: post #9
wfunction wrote: post #5

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 t…

Yeah my focus wasn't on the wording, it was on the order of the two variables. Interesting, thanks.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#34

Post by wfunction »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #10
wfunction wrote: post #5

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.

Gotcha. But then what we really want is the second one, right? Which implies we might actually not be able to judge depression based on this, right?

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#35

Post by matthewmacleod »

meriobrudar wrote: post #27

Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled t…

Isn't it more likely that these scientists do actually know what they are doing, and aren't actually the incompetent bumbling fools you seem to think?

I'm baffled that there is always a response to any scientific research along the lines of "Well, these scientists didn't take into account! They need to compensate for ."

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#36

Post by matthewmacleod »

hueving wrote: post #32
ggggtez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying you didn't read the article then. Or you don't believe that gambling excites people. I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result.

>I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result. Why would the OP try to reproduce something he/she doesn't consider scientific?

Why not? Surely it would be easy to show the unscientific nature of this research?

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#37

Post by chipperyman573 »

hueving wrote: post #32
ggggtez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying you didn't read the article then. Or you don't believe that gambling excites people. I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result.

>I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result. Why would the OP try to reproduce something he/she doesn't consider scientific?

By attempting to reproduce the results, you can get opposing figures that disprove the original theory

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#38

Post by mercer »

zeroer wrote: post #31
meriobrudar wrote: post #27

Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled t…

I don't have a reference offhand, but there's research that indicates that depressed people have more realistic outlooks on life, as contrasted with 'normal' people who are hopelessly optimistic. Maybe the depressed kids figured out quicker that the whole study was pointless?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#39

Post by AimHere »

tdkl wrote: post #17

Or "depressed" children simply aren't smitten by simple artificial gifts.

So what makes non-depressed kids more smitten? What's interesting is that there is a differentiation between the two, not which is the 'right' way to behave.

You can throw your own emotional spin on this phenomenon if you like, but the scientist's job was to investigate whether there is a phenomenon of this sort, and they did just that.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#40

Post by a_bonobo »

meriobrudar wrote: post #27

Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled t…

>Although still analogous to “gambling” tasks used with older samples, the modified version uses varying level of prizes (e.g., poor prize = a single yellow pencil; a great prize = a doll o r nerf toys) instead of the typical monetary incentives. That is, young children do not have a c lear conception of money and its relative quantities; however, at very young ages, children r eactive positively to prizes and gifts. Prior to the task, children were shown 3 boxes of toys: each box had increasingly appealing toys (e.g., least appealing box included standard pencils, and the most appealing box included toys such as dolls and nerf toys). Children were told that wh en they guessed the correct door, they would see a green up arrow, and if they guessed the wrong door, they would see a red arrow pointing down. The experimenter explained that the box of to ys the children could pick from depended on the total number points they earned by guessing doors with either green vs red arrows behind them. Children were told that green arrows were worth 10 pts and red arrows were only worth 5 pts and that the more points they received the better the box they could choose from. The experiment explained that the computer would ke ep track of the number of green and red arrows and their total number of points.

Much more complex than what you're insinuating

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