Investigations of some assumptions and characteristics of a procedure for instrumental conditioning in children

The effectiveness of social reinforcers on persistence and learning tasks following positive and negative social interactions.

“…The criterion tasks were the Marble-in-the-Hole persistence game employed by Berkowitz and Zigler and a two-color discrimination learning task. The latter measure was used in order to circumvent some of the difficulties, for example, position preferences, which recently have been found (Parton & Ross, 1965;Patterson & Hinsey, 1964) with the typical preference-switching marble game as a learning measure. Since the four preliminary tasks and the Marble-in-the-Hole Game are described in some detail elsewhere (Berkowitz & Zigler, 1965) a description of only the learning apparatus will be included here.…”

Conditioning effects on two apparatuses

“…Patterson & Hinsey (1964) found a .75 correlation on test-retest using the marble box, suggesting that the conditioning by social reinforcers can be stable when all parameters are held constant. The effects of apparatus, reinforcing agent, and schedules of reinforcement should be better understood before further theorizing and experimentation are done with social responsiveness (defined by conditioning scores).…”

“…and computing the median proportion for the base operant period and the experimental period. The difference score for each individual on both apparatuses was converted to a T Score (Patterson & Hinsey, 1964).…”