Is increased sensitivity to punishment a common characteristic of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder? An experimental study of response allocation in Japanese children

Research on motivational processes in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) focuses on reward. Studies with punishment are limited and findings mixed. This study evaluated the effects of punishment on response allocation in Japanese children with and without ADHD. Thirty-four children meeting DSM-IV criteria for ADHD and 59 typically developing control-group children completed an operant task in which they choose between playing two simultaneously available games. Reward was arranged symmetrically across the games under concurrent variable interval schedules. Asymmetric punishment schedules were superimposed with responses on one game punished four times as often as responses on the other. Children with ADHD showed greater behavioral sensitivity to punishment than controls. They allocated significantly more responses to the less frequently punished alternative and were more likely to play this game on consecutive trials and responded more slowly to the more punished game. Control group children allocated their responses evenly across games. Punishment exerted greater control over the behavior of Japanese children with ADHD than controls, similar to findings with children from Western countries, suggesting this is a common characteristic of the disorder. The behavior of typically developing Japanese children, while demonstrating awareness of punishment, was not controlled by the frequency of its occurrence.