Effects of Rewarded Pretraining and Partial Reinforcement on Lever Pulling by Retarded and Nonretarded Children

Abstract

The task of pulling 2 levers for marble rewards was given to 72 retarded and 72 nonretarded children matched for mental age (approximately 7 yr.). Half of the children were given a pretraining task on which they experienced success and the other half a control pretraining procedure. On the lever pulling task half the Ss received 50% reward on the first lever and the other half 100% reward on the first lever, both groups being always rewarded after pulling the second lever. Rewarded pretraining led to a slowing down of starting speeds on both levers which was more marked in retarded than in nonretarded children. For nonretarded Ss the 50% reinforcement condition led to consistently faster responding on both levers, but this partial reward superiority was seen in retarded Ss only on the early trials. Interpretations of these effects in terms of Amsel's theory of frustrative nonreward and Zigler's concept of a retardate negative reaction tendency were offered.