DISCRIMINATION LEARNING IN CHILDREN AS A FUNCTION OF REINFORCEMENT CONDITION TASK COMPLEXITY AND CHRONOLOGICAL AGE

In a two-choice paired-presentation discrimination task, 120 children at two age levels were either reinforced for correct responses, punished for incorrect responses, or rewarded for correct responses and punished for incorrect responses at either of two levels of task complexity. Reinforcement and punishment were nonverbal and were accomplished by either presenting or removing tokens. Task complexity was varied in terms of the number of irrelevant stimulus dimensions to which a response could be made. Highly significant treatment effects favored the combination of reinforcement and punishment, with no difference appearing between the reinforcement group and the punishment group. This relationship was constant across both age and task complexity, with no significant interactions occurring. © 1969.