An operant conditioning discrimination paradigm was evaluated of relationships between response behavior of young children and two stimulus components of the paradigm, the discriminative stimulus and the reinforcing stimulus. Findings revealed the effects of schedules of reinforcement, novel reinforcement, and age. (Author/CL)

A standard operant procedure, Visual Reinforcement Audiometry, was modified to enhance 16 infants' attention to impending auditory signals. The modified technique achieved an average 5.5 dB improvement in threshold over the conventional technique. Correction for adult performance in similar tasks indicated a 3.3 dB attentional effect between…