EFFECT OF REINFORCEMENT ON FACIAL RESPONSIVITY AND PERSISTENCE IN CHILDREN WITH ATTENTION-DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

Children with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may lear n poorly under conditions of inconsistent (partial) reinforcement beca use they are easily frustrated and fail to develop persistence. To tes t this hypothesis, a nonsense word spelling task was used with 22 ADHD and 20 control children to investigate the effects of partial and con tinuous reinforcement on facial responsivity (frustration measure), wo rds spelled correctly (learning performance measure), and persistence ratings. Partially reinforced ADHD children manifested higher levels o f frustration in both acquisition and extinction than any other group and gave significantly lower persistence ratings across acquisition th an partially reinforced control children. ADHD children spelled fewer words correctly than controls, regardless of reinforcement schedule. T hese findings suggest that partial reinforcement training develops per sistence in normal but not ADHD children. The findings have theoretica l implications for the etiology of ADHD as well as practical implicati ons for designing behavior modification programs to treat ADHD.