Mazes in Which Rats Take the Longer Path to Food

Two previous studies which supported a cognitive interpretation of the social deprivation-satiation effect with middle class children were replicated with lower class Ss. In the first experiment 40 middle class and 40 lower class children were given a social deprivation or a satiation treatment, followed by a binary discrimination test, given either by the same or by another E. In the second experiment, 74 middle class and 74 lower class Ss were given information about their E's “reinforcing habits” prior to the treatment. In that experiment both treatment and test were given by the same E. The findings for the middle class samples were as follows: the deprivation-satiation effect was person-specific, not generalizable from one E to another; the informational input caused a deprivation-satiation like effect and modified the effect of actual treatments on subsequent performance. The lower class children reacted mostly to the most immediate, salient, and concrete aspects of the situation. The intangible reinforcing stimulus word Good was an effective reinforcer for them, but only a non-significant trend toward a deprivation-satiation effect was observed, with no person-specificity. The informational input had no effect on the performance of the lower class children.