Machine learning can be broadly defined as the study and design of algorithms that improve with experience. Reinforcement learning is a variety of machine learning that makes minimal assumptions about the information available for learning, and, in a sense, defines the problem of learning in the broadest possible terms. Reinforcement learning algorithms are usually applied to “interactive” prob...

Persuasive negotiation involves negotiating using rhetorical arguments (such as threats, rewards, and appeals), which act as persuasive elements that aim to force or convince an opponent to accept a given proposal. In the case of rewards, these have a positive nature as they use the argument that something positive will happen to the opponent if he accepts to do the requirement sent by the prop...

“Making an informed decision” implies that more information leads to better decisions, yet it may be the case that additional information biases decisions in a systematic and sometimes detrimental manner. In the present study we examined the effect of additional information on older adults’ decision-making using a task for which available rewards were dependent on the participant’s recent patte...

In the present scenario each and every industrial organization is surrounded by an unbrokenable mount known as competition. To subdue this arduous mount, organizations have to encourage the citizenship behavior among employees which enhance the success and effectiveness of an organization, because employees are often viewed as invaluable assets of organizations. As an evident of this, earlier s...

Among the methods used to increase enjoyment and performance in serious games, reward schedules, i.e., determining when in-game rewards should be given, have not been sufficiently explored. In the present study, we designed a simple memory training serious game and compared two methods of scheduling rewards, both based on the paradigm of positive reinforcement: fixed ratio schedule, in which re...

This study investigated whether age and ADHD symptoms affected choice preferences in children and adolescents when they chose between (1) small immediate rewards and larger delayed rewards and (2) small certain rewards and larger probabilistic uncertain rewards. A temporal discounting (TD) task and a probabilistic discounting (PD) task were used to measure the degree to which the subjective val...

Individual discounting rates for different types of delayed reward are typically assumed to reflect a single, underlying trait of impulsivity. Recently, we showed that discounting rates are orders of magnitude steeper for directly consumable liquid rewards than for monetary rewards (Jimura et al., 2009), raising the question of whether discounting rates for different types of reward covary at t...

In everyday life contexts and work settings, monetary rewards are often contingent on future performance. Based on research showing that the anticipation of rewards causes improved task performance through enhanced task preparation, the present study tested the hypothesis that the promise of monetary rewards for future performance would not only increase future performance, but also performance...