Development of social responses in two severely retarded children

The effect of reinforcement dependent on the social responses of two severely retarded withdrawn children was investigated. During 30 training sessions (30 min each) food and praise were administered dependent upon the children's mutual participation in a ball-rolling and block-passing task. Both children showed a progressive increase in social interaction in a non-training situation during this reinforcement period. After the reinforcement procedures were removed, social behavior decreased markedly. Response generalization to children not involved in training occurred.     

Individual differences in verbal conditioning, extinction, and awareness

The present study examined the relationship of three individual difference variables—need for approval, a belief in internal versus external control of reinforcement, and verbal intelligence— to acquisition, extinction, and awareness in a verbal conditioning task Based on a postexperiment interview and recognition task, subjects were grouped according to their awareness of the response-reinforcement contingencies and the degree to which they admitted influence by the experimenter Approval motivated subjects were more likely to acquire the reinforced response regardless of awareness levels than were low need for approval subjects. Subjects assessed as internal were more likely to deny influence by the experimenter and in some instances were more resistant to extinction than subjects called external Subjects higher in verbal intelligence evidenced more awareness than subjects with lower intelligence scores Results suggest that the inclusion of individual difference variable is of crucial importance to a clear understanding of the experimenter-subject interaction in the verbal conditioning situation Implications for the other dyadic interactions, particularly psychotherapy, were discussed