So what'cha want? The impact of individualised rewards on associative learning in psychopathic offenders.

Psychopathic individuals typically present with associative learning impairments under explicit learning conditions. The present study aimed to investigate whether the formation of stimulus-outcome associations, as well as updating of these associations after changed contingencies, could be improved by using rewards with sufficiently high subjective values. To this end, 20 psychopathic offenders, 17 non-psychopathic offenders and 18 healthy controls performed a passive avoidance task with a reversal phase under three motivational conditions, using naturalistic rewards. The subjective values of the rewards were assessed a priori for each individual participant using a visual analogue scale. The correspondence of these values to their internal representation was confirmed by analyses of brain potentials. Analyses using both signal detection theory and classical approaches indicated that psychopathic offenders performed worse compared to the other groups during passive avoidance learning. However, using the signal detection approach, we found this deficiency to be present only when a hypothetical reward was used ('neutral reward' condition), whereas psychopathic offenders performed similar to the other groups when naturalistic rewards could be obtained ('low reward' and 'high reward' conditions). Furthermore, traditional analyses suggested that psychopathic offenders had more hits than the other groups during reversal learning, but the signal detection approach indicated that no effects of group or condition were present. Analysis of win-stay and lose-shift behaviour showed that psychopathic offenders were less likely to stay with a rewarded response during passive avoidance learning in the neutral reward condition. In addition, regardless of experimental phase or condition, psychopathic offenders were less likely to stop responding to a particular stimulus after receiving negative feedback. Although the approaches employed did not lead to unequivocal results, our findings suggest that psychopathic offenders do have the ability to adapt their behaviour to environmental contingencies when positive reinforcers with sufficiently high subjective values are used.

Client factors as predictors of restraint and seclusion in people with intellectual disability.

BACKGROUND: To gain more insight into the antecedent factors of restraint in institutionalised people with intellectual disability (ID), the role played by several demographic and psychological client variables was investigated. METHODS: The data of 475 people (age range 12-95 years) who were residents in a Dutch institution for people with ID were collected. The severity of restraint was rated on an ordinal scale. RESULTS: None of the demographic variables height, weight, age, or length of stay were related to the application of restraint. Significant predictors were the psychological variables: low adaptive functioning, the presence of challenging behaviours, and a relatively high intellectual level. Of the challenging behaviours, specifically behaviours other than actual aggressiveness proved to be predictors of restraint. CONCLUSIONS: The fact that actual aggressiveness plays a minor role in predicting restraint is a new finding and should be further examined in future research.

Age-related differences in brain electrical activity during extended continuous face recognition in younger children, older children and adults.

To examine the development of recognition memory in primary-school children, 36 healthy younger children (8-9 years old) and 36 healthy older children (11-12 years old) participated in an ERP study with an extended continuous face recognition task (Study 1). Each face of a series of 30 faces was shown randomly six times interspersed with distracter faces. The children were required to make old vs. new decisions. Older children responded faster than younger children, but younger children exhibited a steeper decrease in latencies across the five repetitions. Older children exhibited better accuracy for new faces, but there were no age differences in recognition accuracy for repeated faces. For the N2, N400 and late positive complex (LPC), we analyzed the old/new effects (repetition 1 vs. new presentation) and the extended repetition effects (repetitions 1 through 5). Compared to older children, younger children exhibited larger frontocentral N2 and N400 old/new effects. For extended face repetitions, negativity of the N2 and N400 decreased in a linear fashion in both age groups. For the LPC, an ERP component thought to reflect recollection, no significant old/new or extended repetition effects were found. Employing the same face recognition paradigm in 20 adults (Study 2), we found a significant N400 old/new effect at lateral frontal sites and a significant LPC repetition effect at parietal sites, with LPC amplitudes increasing linearly with the number of repetitions. This study clearly demonstrates differential developmental courses for the N400 and LPC pertaining to recognition memory for faces. It is concluded that face recognition in children is mediated by early and probably more automatic than conscious recognition processes. In adults, the LPC extended repetition effect indicates that adult face recognition memory is related to a conscious and graded recollection process rather than to an automatic recognition process.

Age-related differences in brain activity during extended continuous word recognition in children.

To examine the development of verbal recognition memory in primary-school children, 36 healthy younger children (8-9 years old) and 36 healthy older children (11-12 years old) participated in an ERP study with an extended continuous recognition task. Each word of a series of 30 words was shown randomly for six times interspersed with distracter words. The children were required to make old versus new decisions. The data analyses focused on old/new effects (repetition 1 vs. new word) and multiple repetition effects (repetitions 1 through 5) for the N1, P2, N400, and the late positive complex (LPC, 500-800 ms after stimulus onset). Younger children exhibited a strong P2 multiple repetition effect across left lateral regions, with P2 amplitudes increasing linearly with the number of word repetitions. Compared to younger children, older children exhibited a much stronger N400 old/new effect across parietal regions. Old/new and repetition effects for N1 and LPC were similar in both age groups. Correlational analysis showed that in older children, larger N400 old/new effects on the continuous recognition task were moderately associated with better verbal learning on an auditory verbal learning task. In both age groups, the gain in recognition accuracy over multiple repetitions correlated with the LPC repetition effect. The age differences in P2 repetition effects and N400 old/new effects suggest that in younger children whole-word orthographic representations are dependent on the strength of the memory trace and that lexical-semantic representations develop with age. The LPC results suggest that recollection plays a substantial role in recognition memory of both younger and older children.