Comparison for Mental Retardates of No-Choice, Initial-Choice, and Idiosyncratic-Choice Reward Strategies

Abstract

45 mentally retarded persons (CA about 18 yr.) worked on both a two-choice discrimination task and a perseverance task under one of three reward conditions. An Idiosyncratic-choice condition, which offered trial-to-trial freedom in the selection of rewards, was expected to lead to higher levels of performance than No-choice or Initial-choice conditions. However, no reliable differences in task performance resulted from the employment of the three reward strategies. Sex and IQ predicted a posteriori performance at least as well as condition of reward. The findings are discussed in relation to “reinforcement menu” technique and incentive theory.