Recency and summation effects of nonreward in children

Effects of 100% and 50% Success Rates on Children's Response Speeds

Nonreward has facilitated subsequent responding in experiments with children whereas failure has consistently resulted in a decrement in performance. On the premise that failure-elicited interference may have masked any frustration effect in previous studies, the present investigation sought to test the prediction, analogous to the partial reinforcement acquisition effect, that response speeds would be faster under conditions of 50% success than under conditions of 100% success. 40 elementary school children performed 24 trials, each trial consisting of a light-switching task followed by a lever-pulling response. Half of the subjects were allowed to succeed on the switching task on 100% of the trials and the other subjects were failed on 50% of the trials. Analysis of the light-switching speeds showed no significant over-all difference between the 50% and 100% groups; however, in the 50% group subjects responded faster on trials immediately following failure than they did on trials immediately following success. Analysis of lever-start speeds showed speeds of subjects in the 50% group were significantly slower following failure than they were following success. The results were discussed in terms of subjects' strategies and failure-produced interference.

Children's Response Speeds and Perseverative Responses following Failure as a Function of Instructions and Interresponse Interval

Nonreward has been found to facilitate subsequent responding in a number of experiments with children whereas failure has consistently resulted in a decrement in performance. Two variables confounding comparisons of nonreward and failure studies are (a) the use of constant interresponse intervals of 5 sec or longer in nonreward studies as compared with the use of 0-sec. intervals in most failure studies and (b) the use of other-blame instructions in nonreward studies and self-blame instructions in failure studies. In the present experiment 18 second- and third-grade children were assigned to each of six conditions formed by the factorial combination of constant interresponse intervals of 0, 4, and 8 sec, and self-blame vs other-blame instructional sets. On each trial the subjects performed a light-switching task followed by a lever-pulling response. They were failed prior to completion of the light-switching task on one-half of the 20 trials. Lever-pulling responses following failure were slower than responses following success in the 0-sec. condition but not in the 4- or 8-sec. condition, and response speeds in the 0-sec. condition on failure trials were slower than speeds on 4- and 8-sec. condition failure trials. Decrements in response speeds following failure were found in both the self-blame and other-blame conditions although the decrement was greater in the former than the latter condition. In addition self-blame subjects made more perseverative responses on the light switching game than other-blame subjects. The results were discussed in terms of the effects of interresponse intervals and instructional set on the extent to which responses produced by failure would occur and interfere with the lever response.