How the carrot approach facilitates learning
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - 03:15
in Psychology & Sociology
People who are rewarded for making correct decisions learn quickly. While the 'carrot' approach may produce favourable results, little is understood about how rewards facilitate the learning process. Now, in a paper published this week in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology, a team headed by Dr Burkhard Pleger of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, and the University College London have demonstrated that the 'reward effect' not only supports the improvement of higher cognitive abilities, but also how brain function in the cortex can be enhanced...