Differential outcomes, schizotypy, and improvement of the recognition of emotional facial expressions: a preliminary study

Schizotypy is defined as a combination of traits qualitatively similar to those found in schizophrenia, though in a minor severity, that can be found in the nonclinical population. Some studies suggest that people with schizotypal traits have problems recognising emotional facial expressions. In this research, we further explore this issue and we investigate, for the first time, whether the differential outcomes procedure (DOP) may improve the recognition of emotional facial expressions. Participants in our study were students that completed the ESQUIZO-Q-A and were set in two groups, high schizotypy (HS) and low schizotypy (LS). Then, they performed a task in which they had to recognise the emotional facial expression of a set of faces. Participants of the HS group and the LS group did not differ in their performance. Importantly, all participants showed better recognition of emotional facial expressions when they were trained with differential outcomes. This novel finding might be relevant for clinical practice since the DOP is shown as a tool that may improve the recognition of emotional facial expressions.

The Differential Outcomes Effect Using Sensory Outcomes in a Many-to-One Matching-to-Sample Task

The present study was designed to evaluate the use of sensory outcomes (visual vs. auditory) using a differential outcomes procedure to facilitate learning in a many-to-one matching-to-sample task. For one group of participants (differential outcomes) each correct stimulus-choice sequence was always followed by a different outcome; whereas for the rest of participants (non-differential outcomes) each correct sequence was followed by the same outcome. Participants trained with differential outcomes showed a faster acquisition and higher overall accuracy than participants trained with non-differential outcomes. The results provide a new extension the differential outcomes effect by using sensory outcomes and many-to-one matching to-sample task; applications of the differential outcomes procedure are discussed.

Mejora del aprendizaje discriminativo en niños: consecuencias diferenciales y administración manual de diferentes formas de refuerzo

In recent years, several studies have demonstrated that discriminative learning is facilitated when each association to be learned is always followed by a unique outcome. This way of providing outcomes was called the differential outcomes procedure (DOP). The aim of the study reported here was to assess whether the DOP could improve learning of symbolic conditional discriminations in 5- and 7-year-old children when performing a paper-and-pencil task using different types of training in which: 1) reinforcers were given after correct choices (+), 2) reinforcers were withdrawn when errors were made (-), or 3) a combination of both (+/-). In Experiments 1a and 1b secondary reinforcers were used along with primary reinforcers, while in Experiments 2a and 2b only primary reinforcers were used. Participants showed better performance when differential outcomes were arranged regardless of the type of reinforcers (secondary plus primary or only primary) and the different strategies of reinforcement (+, -, or +/-). These results add to those found by Martínez et al. (2009, 2013) and demonstrate that the beneficial effect of the DOP on discriminative learning is also independent of the way in which the stimuli and the outcomes are presented, facilitating its use in applied contexts.