ERIC Number: EJ743292
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Sep
Pages: 11
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1040-3590
EISSN: N/A
A Formal Cognitive Model of the Go/No-Go Discrimination Task: Evaluation and Implications
Yechiam, Eldad; Goodnight, Jackson; Bates, John E.; Busemeyer, Jerome R.; Dodge, Kenneth A.; Pettit, Gregory S.; Newman, Joseph P.
Psychological Assessment, v18 n3 p239-249 Sep 2006
This article proposes and tests a formal cognitive model for the go/no-go discrimination task. In this task, the performer chooses whether to respond to stimuli and receives rewards for responding to certain stimuli and punishments for responding to others. Three cognitive models were evaluated on the basis of data from a longitudinal study involving 400 adolescents.The results show that a cue-dependent model presupposing that participants can differentiate between cues was the most accurate and parsimonious. This model has 3 parameters denoting the relative impact of rewards and punishments on evaluations, the rate that contingent payoffs are learned, and the consistency between learning and responding. Commission errors were associated with increased attention to rewards; omission errors were associated with increased attention to punishments. Both error types were associated with low choice consistency. The parameters were also shown to have external validity: Attention to rewards was associated with externalizing behavior problems on the Achenbach scale, and choice consistency was associated with low Welsh anxiety. The present model can thus potentially improve the sensitivity of the task to differences between clinical populations.
Descriptors: Evaluation Research, Task Analysis, Adolescents, Longitudinal Studies, Cues, Behavior Problems, Dimensional Preference, Discrimination Learning, Cognitive Measurement, Rewards, Punishment, Error of Measurement
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A