Discrimination Learning, Social Class, and Type of Reward

Abstract

A visual discrimination task was used to determine the effectiveness of verbal reward alone (Verbal group) vs a combination of candy and verbal reward (Combined group) with 16 middle-class 5-yr.-olds and 16 5-yr.-olds from a Head Start class. Social class proved to be the only significant variable, the performance of the higher status group being superior to that of the lower status group. Only a tendency for the verbally rewarded Ss to be superior to combined reward Ss was noted.