Effects of reward and response costs on inhibition in ADHD children

This study examined effects of reward and response costs on the ability of 19 attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 17 control children to inhibit responding. Children were tested under 4 reinforcement conditions on a go/no-go learning task developed by J. P. Newman, C. S. Widom, and S. Nathan (1985). Two conditions involved both reward and response costs. 1 response costs only, and 1 reward only. ADHD children made more commission errors than controls across the 4 conditions. Analyses of learning curves indicated that group differences became larger on later trials. Thus, impaired inhibition was more generalized in ADHD children than in the psychopaths and extraverts studied by Newman and colleagues, and it became most evident when the children were required to improve learning across trials.