Four experiments were conducted to test a deduction from John B. Carroll’s Model of School Learning. According to the model, if a learner is already willing to persevere to the extent needed for learning, increasing the learner’s perseverance will not alter degree of learning or learning rate. In all experiments, the time needed to learn a paired-associate task under an encouragement condition designed to increase perseverance was compared to the learning time under a discouragement or control condition. As predicted by the model, none of the differences was statistically significant. The findings support the claim that rewards may increase the time learners will spend on a task but not their degree or rate of learning.
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