Effects of Magnitude of Reward and Percentage of Reinforcement on a Lever Movement Response12

Abstract

The acquisition and extinction of a lever movement response were investigated as a function of percentage of reinforcement (100 vs. 50 per cent) and magnitude of reward (one vs. five pieces of candy per reinforced trial). Sixteen kindergarten children were assigned to each of the four experimental conditions. Their task was to move a lever through an 18-inch distance in order to receive candy. The performance measures during acquisition indicated that the 50 per cent reinforced Ss performed faster than the 100 per cent reinforced Ss. Larger magnitude of reward was found to have a slight, but nonsignificant, decremental effect on performance. The extinction measures indicated that no decrement in performance occurred, but rather, that response level actually increased during the 12 nonreinforced trials.