Connor Lawhead

and 3 more

Reward-related brain activity has most often been examined during monetary reward paradigms, but it has also been examined in response to other types of reward (e.g., social reward) that often necessitate modifications to procedure and task design. It is important to investigate whether task factors impact the ability to assess the neural response common across different types of reward (i.e., domain-general) and specific to each type of reward (i.e., domain-specific). The present study involved a sample of 303 18-year-olds (49.5% female) who completed the Monetary Doors task and two social tasks: Social Reward, which was designed to be analogous to Monetary Doors, and Island Getaway, which differed procedurally from the other two tasks. Using electroencephalography to measure the time-domain reward positivity (RewP) and time-frequency delta and theta activity, we found that all three tasks elicited a RewP and greater delta activity to favorable outcomes (i.e., monetary win, social like/acceptance), and greater theta activity to unfavorable outcomes (i.e., monetary loss, social dislike/rejection). The RewP was positively correlated across all three tasks, indicating the ability to measure domain-general neural response, but the neural responses during Monetary Doors and Social Reward were more strongly correlated compared to the other task pairwise correlations for the RewP and delta activity. The present study suggests that different monetary and social reward tasks can elicit both domain-general and domain-specific brain activity but are influenced by task design. Recommendations are made regarding factors to consider when attempting to examine domain-general and domain-specific neural response to reward.