Adults' Warmth, Type of Verbal Reinforcer, and Children's Learning

Abstract

The present study investigated the contribution of an adult's expressive behavior and type of verbal reinforcement to children's learning. An adult female interacted in a warm or cold manner with 120 third-grade, middle-class children, while at the same time giving one of two reinforcers—“correct” or “nice”—for one of two responses in a simple two-choice learning situation. The warm adult was more effective in inducing learning than the cold, and “correct” was a more potent reinforcer than “nice.”