Age changes in nonverbal decoding as a function of increasing amounts of information

A test of nonverbal decoding skill (the PONS test) was administered to 632 subjects of eight different age levels, ranging from third graders to adults (Ages 8–33 years). Females were more accurate than males, older subjects were more accurate than younger ones, and all samples tended to decode more successfully when more information was available. Three different analyses showed that the increase in accuracy with increasing amounts of information was more pronounced for the older than for the younger groups. This differential effectiveness in the utilization of available information was discussed in terms of processing capacity, effort, and strategies for sampling a diversity of cues.     

A test of the self-perception explanation of the effects of rewards on intrinsic interest

An experiment was conducted to test the proposition that rewards undermine or enhance intrinsic interest in a task to the extent that individuals interpret their behavior as being motivated by the reward. It was predicted that when subjects were denied the opportunity to develop and confirm this attribution, rewards would not produce an undermining effect, but rather would enhance dispositions and behavior. Subjects were recruited to evaluate a new sugar-free soft drink. Two levels of incentives (reward-no reward), two levels of examination (opportunity-no opportunity), and three levels of outcome (good-neutral-poor) were employed. The results support the prediction that an incentive's effect depends on the examination opportunity. In the examination condition, rewarded subjects attributed their behavior more to external factors than did unrewarded subjects, but gave more negative product evaluations only after tasting it. In the no examination condition, there were no differences in the attributions made by rewarded and unrewarded subjects, and rewarded subjects were more positively disposed toward the product both before and after tasting it. These results are explained as a consequence of two properties of rewards, enhancement through reinforcement and undermining through discounting, and of hypothesis-testing processes.     

Temporal control of behavior: schedule interactions

In Experiment I the response that terminated the postreinforcement pauses occurring under a fixed-interval 60-second schedule was reinforced, if the pause duration exceeded 30 seconds. The percentage of such pauses, rather than increasing, decreased. There were complex effects on the discriminative control of the pause by the reinforcer terminating the previous fixed interval, depending on whether the fixed interval and the added reinforcer were the same or different. In Experiments II(a) and II(b), each reinforcement initiated an alternative fixed-interval interresponse-time-greater-than-t-sec schedule, the schedule values being systematically varied. When the response following a pause exceeding a given duration was reinforced, fewer such pauses occurred than when they were not reinforced, i.e., on the comparable simple fixed-interval schedule. There was no systematic relationship between mean interrinforcement interval and duration of the postreinforcement pause. The pause duration initiated by reinforcement was directly related to the dependency controlling the shortest pause at that time, regardless of changes in mean interreinforcement interval.     

Responding maintained under fixed-interval and fixed-time schedules of electric shock presentation

Following initial histories under a schedule of electric shock postponement, lever pressing in squirrel monkeys was maintained under fixed-interval and fixed-time schedules of electric shock presentation. No difference in either rate or pattern of responding was obtained when these schedules were presented as components of a multiple schedule. When they were presented singly for long periods of time, the fixed-interval schedule consistently maintained a higher response rate than the fixed-time schedule. The pattern of responding under both schedules was similar, typically consisting of a pause at the beginning of each interval followed by either a steady or a positively accelerating rate of responding. The results suggest that the response-shock dependency is of critical importance in the maintenance of high rates of responding under schedules of electric shock presentation, and support the general view that such responding may be conceptualized as operant behavior under control of many of the same variables that control responding under comparable schedules of food or water reinforcement.     

The extinction of within-compound flavor associations

Three experiments studied extinction of the associations which are formed between two flavors presented in a simultaneous compound. In Experiment 1 those associations were identified by a sensory preconditioning procedure in which the poisoning of one element of the compound led to the rejection of the other element. Separate presentation of either element between their joint occurence and the poisoning of one element sharply attenuated the rejection of the other element. That attenuation was interpreted in terms of the extinction of within-compound associations. Experiment 2 obtained similar results with an alternative extinction procedure in which the elements of the original compound were presented in other compounds. Experiment 3 obtained similar results when the existence of the within-compound associations was determined by an alternative assessment procedure in which one element of the compound was made more attractive by the induction of a specific hunger. These experiments suggest that within-compound associations can be extinguished when the elements are separately presented outside of the compound. Experiments 2 and 3 make less plausible an alternative interpretation of the effects of separate element presentation in terms of reduction of the novelty of the element. The findings may be taken as implying that the elements of a simultaneously presented compound are joined by a single symmetrical association which acts at various points during a sensory preconditioning experiment.