Sam L. Witryol

Incentives and learning in children.

Publisher Summary This chapter deals with the definition and manipulation of incentive qualities and magnitudes in laboratory learning situations with children. In selective learning, incentives may direct attention to cues and dimensions; in verbal learning, they may lead to arousal facilitating attention and/or selective rehearsal. Individual differences in intelligence and socioeconomic status have sometimes been instructive, as have many pilot experiments that failed. While material rewards were most often employed, verbal rewards were frequently included, and the interaction with experimentally manipulated motivation is investigated in the program undertaken. The effects of accumulating rewards in massed sessions are also studied. The chapter attempts to review the laboratory findings, including work currently in progress, to specify critical parameters, demonstrate theoretical issues, and share complex problems.

The Effects of Differential Incentives on Second-Grade Rehearsal and Free Recall

Abstract Second-grade childrens overt rehearsal and free recall were examined in two independent incentive conditions: a constant incentive condition in which all words were associated with 5¢, and a differential incentive condition in which one half of the words were associated with 10¢ and the other half with 1¢. Results supported the major hypothesis that, compared to the constant condition, differential incentive Ss would exhibit more mature forms of strategic rehearsal by increasing their level of re-entry processing and their rehearsal set size. These strategies have been previously produced in grade 2 children only through direct training procedures; the present experiment is the first to induce strategic rehearsal for grade 2 through incentive manipulations. Further findings indicated that primacy effect in the differential condition was mediated by recall from short- and not long-term memory.

Incentive effects upon attention in children's discrimination learning ☆

Abstract Following a 40-trial training procedure in which high and low incentive values were conditioned to stimulus dimensions, 276 children in Grades 2, 4, 5, and 6 were tested on an 80-trial, two-choice discrimination learning test. Differential, incentive associated, dimension preferences from training were hypothesized to facilitate or impair test performance by altering observing responses to the relevant dimension in which the correct stimulus eue was found. After exploring boundary conditions of instructions, incentive type. definition of samples as learners or nonlearners, and mode of stimulus presentation in training, the hypothesis was clearly confirmed for males in the second grade. Equivocal support was found for girls and for older children under varying experimental conditions. Results, taken together with back-ward learning curves, strongly suggest that differential incentive values influence the point at which learning starts, rather than slope or asymptoie. The application of attention theory under certain conditions was commended as a possible explanation for some past findings of acquisition differences as a function of different reinforcement values.

A Developmental Comparison of Novelty-Familiarity Levels in First- and Fifth-Grade Children.

Abstract The current study provides a developmental comparison to an earlier investigation of Grade 1 children concerning the influence of novelty-familiarity levels on preference value of incentive objects. Twenty Grade 5 children were given binary incentive preference tests following each of four different single reward, familiarization treatment sequences. The functions relating lower mean percent choices of the higher valued incentive to decreasing novelty were highly similar for Grades 1 and 5, suggesting that the short-term novelty effect of the familiarization sequences was very stable across the age range, 6 to 11 years.

Developmental Invariance of Novelty Functions Contrasted to Age Differences in the Moss-Harlow Effect

Summary Twenty preschool boys and girls were given binary incentive preference tests following each of four single reward familiarization sequences. When their performance was compared to that of first- and fifth-grade children, it was found that, for all grade levels, mean percent choice of the incentive object increased as a function of increasing novelty, suggesting that short-term novelty effects of the familiarization sequence were stable across a wide age range, 4 to 11 years. This conclusion is at variance with results from discrimination learning studies, which demonstrate decreasing novelty effects with increasing age, from MA 3 years to MA 8 years. Such variance appears to derive from differences between collative processes mediating childrens responses to learning, compared to performance tasks, as a function of age.

Social Manipulation of Preschool Children's Paired Comparisons Incentive Preferences

In two previous papers we examined the measurement characteristics and the sensitivity of the method of paired comparisons as a scaling approach to representative child incenrives employed in recent experimental investigations (Witryol & Fischer, 1960; Witryol & Ormsby, 1961). Our results have demonstrated that Ss, ranging in age from 3 to 12 yr., can scale these incentives quite reliably and that the rank positions of these reward values are consistent with equivocal results from reinforcement laboratory learning research with children. On the basis of certain surprises encountered when we conducted a developmental scaling research, e.g., the strong potency of verbal incentives in older age groups, and in response to one laboratory accident (unintentionally allowing a group of preschool Ss to play with one reward object), we began to reconsider the more obvious determinants of incentive value, i.e., inuinsic and extrinsic conditions. It can be assumed that commonly used laboratory incentives, like candy and uinkets, possess intrinsic edible and manipulatable reinforcement strength for children. But Ss in recent experiments on incentive valences have usually been at least 3 yr. of age, and even at that early developmental level, exrrinsic, derived reward values must be assumed to have been superimposed upon primary reinforcement strengths as a function of learning, more or less homogeneous for cultural groups. This involves the familiar process of secondary and higher order reinforcements. The child psychologist studying incentive strengths very often encounters secondary reward values already built into the history of his young, contaminated Ss. One line of investigation which then ensues would deal with the susceptibility of intrinsic rewards to the influence of excrinsic or secondary reinforcement values. The basic hypothesis is that incentive object preferences of preschool children are strongly influenced by social suggestion or social learning. The purpose of the study was to demonstrate that a relatively neutral object, judged lowest on a scale by young children, would subsequently be rated higher after verbal social manipulation.

A Paired Comparisons Scale of Children's Preferences for Monetary and Material Rewards Used in Investigations of Incentive Effects

Summary The method of paired comparisons was used to determine 40 first-, third-, and fifth-grade childrens preferences for 12 objects frequently employed as rewards in developmental studies. Significant coefficients of agreement demonstrated stability in the preference order of the 12 objects across the three grades, despite minor fluctuations in preferences for some items. Increases in both intraindividual consistency and interindividual ageement were obtained as a function of developmental level. Despite the introduction of monetary incentives to replace edible rewards employed in a study a decade earlier, the eight rewards common to both scales approximated rank order identity; consistency and agreement data, and developmental trends were highly similar in both studies. Differentiation of preferences increased with age. Full appreciation of the quantitative relationship between the dime and nickel developed between first and third grade, and the coins increased in salience relative to the other rewar...

Uncertainty and Novelty as Collative Motivation in Children

Abstract Novelty and uncertainty, distinguished by differences in the temporal distribution of variation in experience, were manipulated as independent factors to determine their relative incentive value for children. Forty first-and fourth-grade boys and girls were given 24 binary-choice preference tests which placed a moderately valued, constant incentive object into competition with a small opaque (uncertainty) or transparent (no uncertainty) package containing a relatively familiar or novel reward. Results showed that uncertainty, conceptualized as conflict within a set of expectations for the future, generated far greater collative arousal than novelty, conceptualized as conflict with respect to past experience. Noveltys collative effects were demonstrated in the choices of the older children and the girls, but the first-graders and the boys failed to differentiate between the familiar and novel alternatives. Attenuation of novelty-familiarity effects was attributed to contrast between the uncertain...

Is Variety the Better Part of Novelty

Summary An experimental task was constructed to evaluate novelty effects produced by an underlying variety component and by unexpectedness. Ten fifth-grade children were given a set of two-choice preference tests designed to separate the effects of variety from those of novelty in determining childrens material reward choices. Results showed that variety, defined contemporaneously, and novelty, defined sequentially, contributed independent collative variance. Variation in experience, distributed temporally as novelty, was preferred to concurrent variation, or variety. The findings suggest that simple variation in experience contributes motivational variance, but it is only when this variation is distributed over time, creating unexpectedness, that noveltys full effects are produced.

Gender as a Moderator Variable in the Relationship Between an Intrinsic Motivation Scale and Short-Term Novelty in Children

Harters (1980) Intrinsic-Extrinsic Orientation scale was examined for evidence of empirical and construct validity. We hypothesized that subscales defining the motivational component of intrinsic motivation would be correlated with novelty, a collative motivational variable. Partial support for the hypothesis was obtained for boys; correlations between novelty and Harters Curiosity subscale were .57, .64, and .58 for boys in the third, fifth, and combined grades, respectively, and correlations approached significance for Harters Challenge subscale. Not predicted were the correlations of .40, .68, and .46 obtained for girls in the third, fifth, and combined grades, respectively, between the Independent Judgment subscale (a cognitive-informational scale) and novelty. Results indicated that gender operated as a moderator variable, with boys expressing collative motivation directly in an action-oriented form, and girls demonstrating it somewhat indirectly in a thought-oriented form.