This article describes the use of the precise feedback and negative reinforcement to ameliorate problems at a community health center. Both procedures were successful in improving the performance (returning toys to their appropriate places) of undergraduate paraprofessionals involved in an educational program for disadvantaged children. The study…

The assumption that people possess a repertoire of strategies to solve the inference problems they face has been raised repeatedly. However, a computational model specifying how people select strategies from their repertoire is still lacking. The proposed strategy selection learning (SSL) theory predicts a strategy selection process on the basis…

The differential effects of contingent reward (candy), punishment (loss of candy), and knowledge of results (KOR) were investigated in eighty 9- to 10-year-old males. Level of performance of groups receiving KOR was significantly higher than performance on groups rewarded or punished with candy. (MS)

Using verbal material, this study explored the effect of the temporal interval of feedback as it interacted with two other variables: (1) method of presenting learning material (inductive or deductive), and (2) activity of the learner during the delay interval (activity relevant or irrelevant to the material). The major objective was to compare…

Subjects (N=45) were treated with one of three weight control procedures: (a) attention placebo; (b) covert sensitization; and (c) covert sensitization augmented by false physiological feedback. Although all treatment groups lost weight, there was no differential weight loss among the groups at posttest or a 4-week follow-up test. (Author)

Studied males initially angered or not angered by an experimental accomplice. Later shocks were administered to the same accomplice. Subjects were told the shocks would interfere with learning and cause pain or were given no information. Results show angered men receiving hurt instructions and high-victim-pain feedback were most aggressive.…

Performance feedback has facilitated the acquisition and maintenance of a wide range of behaviors (e.g., health-care routines, seat-belt use). Most researchers have attributed the effectiveness of performance feedback to (a) its discriminative functions, (b) its reinforcing functions, or (c) the combination of the two. In this study, we attempted…

Study reported to the Western Psychological Association (Long Beach, California, April 1966).

This study compared systematic desensitization and two pseudotherapy manipulations with and without false galvanic skin response feedback after every session suggesting improvement in the modification of intense snake and spider fear. The results indicated no consistent differences between the three treatment groups. (Author)

Discusses the nature of control, examining how organisms as control systems sense or monitor the variable being controlled when responding to environmental changes. Argues that learning is the development of control in an attempt to fit the two phenomena central to traditional learning theory--conditioning and reinforcement--into the broader…