Delay in receiving a reward was studied in 6 to 9-year-old children. Results indicated that the older children, in contrast to the younger children, chose a delayed reward over immediate reward, whether or not they saw the reward before choosing. (ST)

A study of children's incentive preferences revealed reliable age and sex differences, and significant discrepancies with adults' estimates of what children like. Implications for research with children are discussed. (DP)

Preschoolers and second graders observed a model choose his "favorites" in a series of common object trios and were then asked to recall the model's choices. Results indicated that children's level of attention influences their level of learning in an observational setting. (ST)

Effects of instruction and reward contingency on conformity to a prohibition were studied in preschoolers. Instructions were varied in terms of explicitness and reward was either contingent or not contingent upon following the instructions. (Author/SS)

Three experiments measured 2.5- and 3.5-year-olds' long-term retention of object-location pairings. The subjects were provided with reinforcing information three weeks after the initial exposure and tested four weeks after initial exposure. It was found that this reinstatement (1) improved children's long-term retention; (2) affected both…

Reinforcement conditions of approval, disapproval, or silence were used during a discrimination task assigned to 96 boys and 96 girls. Children receiving criticism responded at slower rates and made more errors than children receiving praise or silence. Retention was measured after 8 days. Results suggest that disapproval negatively affects both…

A four choice discrimination problem was used to examine imitative behavior in children matched in mental age but differing in chronological age. The finding that older children imitated less than younger children is discussed in terms of socialization. (DP)

Major findings of this study are that (a) there is an increasing tendency, with increasing age, to make differential use of different communication channels according to the aspect of meaning considered, and (b) the relative importance of intonation to perceptions of affective meaning increases with age. (Authors)

Main effect of reinforcement for mean response latency indicated that subjects took longer to respond under disapproval than under approval or silence. (Authors)

The relative weakness of sex-role labels as reinforcers, and the disappearance of differential effectiveness of male and female labels at the fourth-grade level would appear to be congruent with Kohlberg's (1966) cognitively based theory of sex-role acquisition. (Authors)