8 ms·

Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

102 points by devinp 10y ago

StClaire 10y ago
Interesting. But isn't this almost the definition of depression?
- wapz 10y ago
  I think a better take away is the reverse. If you are rewarding children in your class (or your kids) and one is not enthusiastic then you should take note there might be a problem (essentially the first sentence of the article).
  - douche 10y ago
    I'd be very careful here. Perhaps the particular reward is not perceived by the child as a reward? I can think of any number of things that one party might perceive as a reward that would be, to me, uncomfortable or meh.
    - jayajay 10y ago
      Interesting. Instead, kid enters the room, you tell them that they will be sitting there anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours, depending on how long the experiment should be. They get to choose a sequence of doors. At each step, the door can either contain +10 minutes or -10 minutes, representing the number of minutes which will be either added to or subtracted from their experiment duration, respectively. My guess is that the depressed/bored children will now respond a little bit better to this experiment. It's just a guess -- but I think depressed/bored kids would tend to avoid spending time being bored in a little lab room.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - Symbiote 10y ago
        Depression has little to do with boredom. I think a depressed person would be more likely to ignore all your doors, or open a few without caring one way or the other. But I'm not a psychiatrist.
        jayajay 10y ago
        > Depression has little to do with boredom. This is not as well understood as we think. I would suggest doing that experiment with both types of people, though.
    - mjevans 10y ago
      The 'take note' part is a yes. One or two signals is not a pattern, but it can mean to start looking for one.
    - csydas 10y ago
      Well, I think the research per the article tried to compensate for this by letting the children choose what would be the reward before hand, so theoretically, they're playing for something they actually want, not just party favors. I'm not clever enough to know exactly how this could introduce a bias into this particular experiment (that is, how such an operation would affect the response of depressed children), but I suppose it could. Frankly speaking I feel like the general premise is probably true, though the how on it is still unclear. I know extremely low self-esteeem and disbelief in adulation/rewards was pretty common for me when I was much deeper into depression. Even now I tend to be pretty dismissive of acknowledgements and rewards.
    - Gravityloss 10y ago
      As long as you understand the Bayesian. P(problem|symptom) = P(symptom|problem) x P(problem) / P(symptom) We only know P(symptom|problem) based on this research...
- aaronblohowiak 10y ago
  anhedonia (an inability to feel pleasure) is one of the markers
- Pigo 10y ago
  I was hoping I wasn't the only one puzzled as to why "a reduced ability to experience joy is a key sign of clinical depression in young children" was newsworthy. I hope the money invested in this research ends up enabling something that can help these poor kids. This is a real problem in our society.
wfunction 10y ago
Hm, can someone help me figure out what this is saying more rigorously? Specifically, is it saying Pr(Dislikes Rewards | Depressed) is high, or is it saying Pr(Depressed | Dislikes Rewards) is high, or both?
- dlss 10y ago
  The article doesn't say anything about Pr(Dislikes Rewards), but rather claims to have measured P(Diminished Response to Rewards | Clinical Depression Diagnosis) > P(Diminished Response to Rewards | !Diagnosis). It's an 84 person study, done using EEG (a very rough measure of electrical activity in the brain), claiming a result largely related neurotransmitter release (ie not the sort of thing EEGs are usually used to measure). You should take their claims with a huge helping of salt.
  - wfunction 10y ago
    Yeah my focus wasn't on the wording, it was on the order of the two variables. Interesting, thanks.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  The first one. They sorted the kids into Depressed and not-Depressed before measuring the reward response. The second probability depends on the relative sizes of all four quadrants and your definition of "high". The truth of statement one does imply that it's higher, but how much higher is not discussed.
  - wfunction 10y ago
    Gotcha. But then what we really want is the second one, right? Which implies we might actually not be able to judge depression based on this, right?
- data_scientist 10y ago
  Nice statistical property: this is the same thing. P(B|A)>P(B) <=> P(A|B)>P(A)
andrewclunn 10y ago
Mrs. Berry was then left with the unpleasant realization that either her entire class was depressed, or scratch and sniff stickers were no longer cool.
cairo_x 10y ago
I can attest to this. Grew up with Bipolar II, and Christmas was always the worst due to the dissonance of the joy around you and your own bad feelings. Birthdays were worse, because then you couldn't escape the attention. I specifically requested to stop having birthday parties -rather to just have a small family dinner. I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. I really wish I was diagnosed earlier, but what can you do? It breaks my heart to think of any kid going through the same thing and it just being dismissed, but what are they supposed to do? If you're going to get a proper diagnosis you need a referral to see a psychiatrist. If you're a bit iffy and the doctor doesn't think a referral is in order you're likely to wind up with a number of wrong diagnoses. I don't think at that age I was even capable of explaining all my symptoms thoroughly enough for even a psychiatrist to figure out the whole picture. This is why physical diagnoses needs to step up to the plate. There needs to be a blood test, or something like it, rather than having to rely on baffled parents, or patients who might not even realize certain symptoms are even worth bringing up at all.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  > I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. > There needs to be a blood test, or something like it, rather than having to rely on baffled parents, or patients who might not even realize certain symptoms are even worth bringing up at all. And that's relying on the parents to even be looking for issues in their offspring. If they're narcissistic, the child could go undiagnosed.
  - cairo_x 10y ago
    You can't blame parents for their child's depression. You can't expect even the most seasoned psychiatric worker to be able to diagnose depression from sight. Currently self-reporting is the only way to diagnose. Observation simply doesn't work. There was a great doco on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql) where they had a house full of people with various different mental illnesses, and trained psychiatric professionals watching on CCTV. Over the course of the show, not one of them made a correct diagnosis by observing behaviour. So how can parents be expected to pick up the signs?
gomijacogeo 10y ago
“If they’re persistently sad, irritable or less motivated, those are markers that may indicate depression, even in kids as young as 3 or 4, and we would recommend that parents get them evaluated.” Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help for their kid.
- meteoricrise 10y ago
  Ok, so in your claimed expert opinion, depressed kids are depressed because of the parents actions; and their parents won't ever give a shit. But so what? Why write that? The folks doing this research know more than you do about the causes of their depression; and they know more than you do about the difficulties in addressing any causes. But unlike you, instead of implying that they're foolish for trying to make the world better, they're just trying to make the world better. Most victories are long, hard slogs. I respect people who undertake those slogs, knowing that victory is not assured. I have no respect for those who throw rocks at them.
  - fgm842 10y ago
    I don't he or she meant it that way, the OP said "from personal experience". Your response was uncalled for...
    - greglindahl 10y ago
      One of the biggest problems with how our society deals with depression is "from personal experience".
      - fgm842 10y ago
        You're overgeneralizing on how society deals with depression. Just because the OP said it does not mean you and I agree with him/her.
    - 10y ago
known 10y ago
EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/12/02_cortex.shtml http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/12/02_corte...
tdkl 10y ago
Or "depressed" children simply aren't smitten by simple artificial gifts.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  Are you implying the researchers didn't account for IQ, or are you just seeking a more positive-sounding restatement of the deviation from the norm?
- AimHere 10y ago
  So what makes non-depressed kids more smitten? What's interesting is that there is a differentiation between the two, not which is the 'right' way to behave. You can throw your own emotional spin on this phenomenon if you like, but the scientist's job was to investigate whether there is a phenomenon of this sort, and they did just that.
  - tdkl 10y ago
    > So what makes non-depressed kids more smitten? That they're receptive to BS tests and more easily manipulated ? > What's interesting is that there is a differentiation between the two, not which is the 'right' way to behave. Interesting ? Of course there's a differentiation between the two, human brains don't operate the same. But my point was with the common popular notion of claiming someone as depressed as something being notoriously bad with them and "not normal". What if the 'depressive realism' (as mentioned in this thread) is actually a feature that humans should develop to more rationally meet their choices in life? Now that's a question I find more interesting.
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      Eeyore > Pooh.
meriobrudar 10y ago
Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled to get a point, because there was literally no effort required to get it, pure chance. I don't know what the "scientists" expected, but I don't know a single person who goes into euphoria after they win a coin flip. Geez, they might all be at risk of clinical depression!!!!!!!
- tdkl 10y ago
  Well obedient consumers should behave like that. Also did you check lately, maybe you're clinically depressed considering your lack of enthusiasm of the evalution method. /s
- ggggtez 10y ago
  So you're saying you didn't read the article then. Or you don't believe that gambling excites people. I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result.
  - hueving 10y ago
    >I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result. Why would the OP try to reproduce something he/she doesn't consider scientific?
    - matthewmacleod 10y ago
      Why not? Surely it would be easy to show the unscientific nature of this research?
    - chipperyman573 10y ago
      By attempting to reproduce the results, you can get opposing figures that disprove the original theory

102 points by devinp 10y ago

StClaire 10y ago

Interesting. But isn't this almost the definition of depression?

wapz 10y ago
I think a better take away is the reverse. If you are rewarding children in your class (or your kids) and one is not enthusiastic then you should take note there might be a problem (essentially the first sentence of the article).
- douche 10y ago
  I'd be very careful here. Perhaps the particular reward is not perceived by the child as a reward? I can think of any number of things that one party might perceive as a reward that would be, to me, uncomfortable or meh.
  - jayajay 10y ago
    Interesting. Instead, kid enters the room, you tell them that they will be sitting there anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours, depending on how long the experiment should be. They get to choose a sequence of doors. At each step, the door can either contain +10 minutes or -10 minutes, representing the number of minutes which will be either added to or subtracted from their experiment duration, respectively. My guess is that the depressed/bored children will now respond a little bit better to this experiment. It's just a guess -- but I think depressed/bored kids would tend to avoid spending time being bored in a little lab room.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      Depression has little to do with boredom. I think a depressed person would be more likely to ignore all your doors, or open a few without caring one way or the other. But I'm not a psychiatrist.
      - jayajay 10y ago
        > Depression has little to do with boredom. This is not as well understood as we think. I would suggest doing that experiment with both types of people, though.
  - mjevans 10y ago
    The 'take note' part is a yes. One or two signals is not a pattern, but it can mean to start looking for one.
  - csydas 10y ago
    Well, I think the research per the article tried to compensate for this by letting the children choose what would be the reward before hand, so theoretically, they're playing for something they actually want, not just party favors. I'm not clever enough to know exactly how this could introduce a bias into this particular experiment (that is, how such an operation would affect the response of depressed children), but I suppose it could. Frankly speaking I feel like the general premise is probably true, though the how on it is still unclear. I know extremely low self-esteeem and disbelief in adulation/rewards was pretty common for me when I was much deeper into depression. Even now I tend to be pretty dismissive of acknowledgements and rewards.
  - Gravityloss 10y ago
    As long as you understand the Bayesian. P(problem|symptom) = P(symptom|problem) x P(problem) / P(symptom) We only know P(symptom|problem) based on this research...
aaronblohowiak 10y ago
anhedonia (an inability to feel pleasure) is one of the markers
Pigo 10y ago
I was hoping I wasn't the only one puzzled as to why "a reduced ability to experience joy is a key sign of clinical depression in young children" was newsworthy. I hope the money invested in this research ends up enabling something that can help these poor kids. This is a real problem in our society.

wfunction 10y ago

Hm, can someone help me figure out what this is saying more rigorously? Specifically, is it saying Pr(Dislikes Rewards | Depressed) is high, or is it saying Pr(Depressed | Dislikes Rewards) is high, or both?

dlss 10y ago
The article doesn't say anything about Pr(Dislikes Rewards), but rather claims to have measured P(Diminished Response to Rewards | Clinical Depression Diagnosis) > P(Diminished Response to Rewards | !Diagnosis). It's an 84 person study, done using EEG (a very rough measure of electrical activity in the brain), claiming a result largely related neurotransmitter release (ie not the sort of thing EEGs are usually used to measure). You should take their claims with a huge helping of salt.
- wfunction 10y ago
  Yeah my focus wasn't on the wording, it was on the order of the two variables. Interesting, thanks.
Dylan16807 10y ago
The first one. They sorted the kids into Depressed and not-Depressed before measuring the reward response. The second probability depends on the relative sizes of all four quadrants and your definition of "high". The truth of statement one does imply that it's higher, but how much higher is not discussed.
- wfunction 10y ago
  Gotcha. But then what we really want is the second one, right? Which implies we might actually not be able to judge depression based on this, right?
data_scientist 10y ago
Nice statistical property: this is the same thing. P(B|A)>P(B) <=> P(A|B)>P(A)

andrewclunn 10y ago

Mrs. Berry was then left with the unpleasant realization that either her entire class was depressed, or scratch and sniff stickers were no longer cool.

cairo_x 10y ago

I can attest to this. Grew up with Bipolar II, and Christmas was always the worst due to the dissonance of the joy around you and your own bad feelings. Birthdays were worse, because then you couldn't escape the attention. I specifically requested to stop having birthday parties -rather to just have a small family dinner. I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. I really wish I was diagnosed earlier, but what can you do? It breaks my heart to think of any kid going through the same thing and it just being dismissed, but what are they supposed to do? If you're going to get a proper diagnosis you need a referral to see a psychiatrist. If you're a bit iffy and the doctor doesn't think a referral is in order you're likely to wind up with a number of wrong diagnoses. I don't think at that age I was even capable of explaining all my symptoms thoroughly enough for even a psychiatrist to figure out the whole picture. This is why physical diagnoses needs to step up to the plate. There needs to be a blood test, or something like it, rather than having to rely on baffled parents, or patients who might not even realize certain symptoms are even worth bringing up at all.

stephengillie 10y ago
> I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. > There needs to be a blood test, or something like it, rather than having to rely on baffled parents, or patients who might not even realize certain symptoms are even worth bringing up at all. And that's relying on the parents to even be looking for issues in their offspring. If they're narcissistic, the child could go undiagnosed.
- cairo_x 10y ago
  You can't blame parents for their child's depression. You can't expect even the most seasoned psychiatric worker to be able to diagnose depression from sight. Currently self-reporting is the only way to diagnose. Observation simply doesn't work. There was a great doco on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql) where they had a house full of people with various different mental illnesses, and trained psychiatric professionals watching on CCTV. Over the course of the show, not one of them made a correct diagnosis by observing behaviour. So how can parents be expected to pick up the signs?

gomijacogeo 10y ago

“If they’re persistently sad, irritable or less motivated, those are markers that may indicate depression, even in kids as young as 3 or 4, and we would recommend that parents get them evaluated.” Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help for their kid.

meteoricrise 10y ago
Ok, so in your claimed expert opinion, depressed kids are depressed because of the parents actions; and their parents won't ever give a shit. But so what? Why write that? The folks doing this research know more than you do about the causes of their depression; and they know more than you do about the difficulties in addressing any causes. But unlike you, instead of implying that they're foolish for trying to make the world better, they're just trying to make the world better. Most victories are long, hard slogs. I respect people who undertake those slogs, knowing that victory is not assured. I have no respect for those who throw rocks at them.
- fgm842 10y ago
  I don't he or she meant it that way, the OP said "from personal experience". Your response was uncalled for...
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    One of the biggest problems with how our society deals with depression is "from personal experience".
    - fgm842 10y ago
      You're overgeneralizing on how society deals with depression. Just because the OP said it does not mean you and I agree with him/her.
  - 10y ago

known 10y ago

EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/12/02_cortex.shtml http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/12/02_corte...

tdkl 10y ago

Or "depressed" children simply aren't smitten by simple artificial gifts.

Terr_ 10y ago
Are you implying the researchers didn't account for IQ, or are you just seeking a more positive-sounding restatement of the deviation from the norm?
AimHere 10y ago
So what makes non-depressed kids more smitten? What's interesting is that there is a differentiation between the two, not which is the 'right' way to behave. You can throw your own emotional spin on this phenomenon if you like, but the scientist's job was to investigate whether there is a phenomenon of this sort, and they did just that.
- tdkl 10y ago
  > So what makes non-depressed kids more smitten? That they're receptive to BS tests and more easily manipulated ? > What's interesting is that there is a differentiation between the two, not which is the 'right' way to behave. Interesting ? Of course there's a differentiation between the two, human brains don't operate the same. But my point was with the common popular notion of claiming someone as depressed as something being notoriously bad with them and "not normal". What if the 'depressive realism' (as mentioned in this thread) is actually a feature that humans should develop to more rationally meet their choices in life? Now that's a question I find more interesting.
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Eeyore > Pooh.

meriobrudar 10y ago

Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled to get a point, because there was literally no effort required to get it, pure chance. I don't know what the "scientists" expected, but I don't know a single person who goes into euphoria after they win a coin flip. Geez, they might all be at risk of clinical depression!!!!!!!

tdkl 10y ago
Well obedient consumers should behave like that. Also did you check lately, maybe you're clinically depressed considering your lack of enthusiasm of the evalution method. /s
ggggtez 10y ago
So you're saying you didn't read the article then. Or you don't believe that gambling excites people. I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result.
- hueving 10y ago
  >I look forward to your scientific paper where you try to reproduce the result. Why would the OP try to reproduce something he/she doesn't consider scientific?
  - matthewmacleod 10y ago
    Why not? Surely it would be easy to show the unscientific nature of this research?
  - chipperyman573 10y ago
    By attempting to reproduce the results, you can get opposing figures that disprove the original theory