Reinforcing Children's Effort: A Comparison of Immigrant, Native-Born Mexican American and Euro-American Mothers

Abstract

The present study examined the role of success, failure, and effort in the reinforcement practices of immigrant, and nativeborn Mexican American mothers and compared them to a baseline group of middle-class Euro-American mothers. Mothers viewed a videotape depicting a seven-year-old male confederate either succeeding or failing on a novel task while displaying varying amounts of effort. Mothers also completed a subjective rating scale in order to determine the effectiveness of the effort variable. Overall, contingent reinforcement was observed among all mothers. However, under conditions of high effort-failure, native born-Mexican American and Euro-American mothers gave more reinforcements than immigrant Mexican American mothers. Under conditions of low effort-success, immigrant Mexican American and Euro-American mothers gave more reinforcements than native-born Mexican American mothers. Results are discussed in terms of selective immigration of Mexican-born mothers and acculturation to United States society.