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Effect of Reinforcement on Facial Responsivity and Persistence in Children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Children with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may learn poorly under conditions of inconsistent (partial) reinforcement because they are easily frustrated and fail to develop persistence. To test this hypothesis, a nonsense word spelling task was used with 22 ADHD and 20 control children to investigate the effects of partial and continuous reinforcement on facial responsivity (frustration measure), words spelled correctly (learning performance measure), and persistence ratings. Partially reinforced ADHD children manifested higher levels of frustration in both acquisition and extinction than any other group and gave significantly lower persistence ratings across acquisition than partially reinforced control children. ADHD children spelled fewer words correctly than controls, regardless of reinforcement schedule. These findings suggest that partial reinforcement training develops persistence in normal but not ADHD children. The findings have theoretical implications for the etiology of ADHD as well as practical implications for designing behavior modification programs to treat ADHD.