LEARNING AS A FUNCTION OF TASK INTEREST REINFORCEMENT AND SOCIAL CLASS VARIABLES

160 Caucasian kindergarteners, high and low on educational environment aspects of social class (EE) learned an interesting or uninteresting game under 1 of 5 reinforcement conditions: knowledge of results, immediate-verbal, delay-verbal, delay-material, or combination (of immediate-verbal and delay-verbal). Task interest as well as the informativeness and delay of reinforcement emerged as important factors. Low EE children learned the high interest task as quickly as high EE children and more quickly than they learned the low interest task. Contrary to results from prior research, symbolic reinforcement when immediately informative was effective for both EE groups, but delayed verbal reinforcement was detrimental to the performance of low EE children. Material reward hindered performance of both EE groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.