Differential incentive values of verbal stimuli were tested under conditions of high and low reinforcement. Results indicated the 40 fifth grade boys acquired responses faster when high preference items were used. (ST)

REINFORCEMENT CONCEPTS DERIVED LARGELY FROM RESEARCH OF SUBHUMAN SUBJECTS WERE TESTED FOR APPLICABILITY TO HUMAN-LEARNING SITUATIONS SIMILAR TO THOSE THAT OCCUR IN SCHOOLS. A SERIES OF EXPLORATORY STUDIES CONDUCTED IS DESCRIBED IN PART II OF THIS REPORT. IN PART III, TWO EXPERIMENTS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE REINFORCING VALUE OF DIFFERENT STIMULI…

In order to investigate the effect of reinforcement on learning, 21 disadvantaged black children, 4 to 5 years of age, were divided among three treatment groups. Group I children received only feedback (information) as to the correctness or incorrectness of their responses. Group II children received a raisin for each correct response, and group…

A new hypothesis is proposed to account for both superior and equal performances under the study-test method as compared with the anticipation method. (Author)

This research on factors influencing verbal learning and retention has used new techniques, attacked new problems, and tested new theories while trying to keep the experiments systematic. Studies conducted involved (1) the effect of varying the length of the intertrial interval on the learning and retention of different types of learning tasks;…