By recording the feedback-related negativity (FRN) in response to gains and losses, we investigated the contribution of outcome monitoring mechanisms to age-associated differences in probabilistic reinforcement learning. Specifically, we assessed the difference of the monitoring reactions to gains and losses to investigate the monitoring of…

Autism is currently one of the most prominent and widely discussed human conditions. Its increased prevalence has intensified the demand for effective educational and therapeutic services, and intervention science is providing mounting evidence about practices that positively impact outcomes. The purpose of this report is to describe a set of…

Twenty children, ten 2-year-olds and ten 3-year-olds, participated in an AB procedure. In the baseline phase, each child was trained the same four matching relations to criterion under intermittent reinforcement. During the subsequent imitation test, the experimenter modeled a total of 20 target gestures (six trials each) interspersed with…

This study examined age differences in error processing and reinforcement learning. We were interested in whether the electrophysiological correlates of error processing, the error-related negativity (ERN) and the feedback-related negativity (FRN), reflect learning-related changes in younger and older adults. To do so, we applied a probabilistic…

This study tested the prediction that a satiation effect would be observed only for noncontingent social stimuli, and not for groups presented with contingent stimuli. (Author/SB)

Two experiments were conducted to examine children's generality of imitative learning by measuring its transfer to other nonimitative performance conditions. Subjects in the first experiment were 14 children (mean age 8.5 years) from the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center's Children's Psychiatric Out-Patient…

Paper based on a study reported by the authors in a paper read at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, September 3, 1966.

A major concern of this report was to compare the effect of three verbal reinforcement combinations (VRCs) on the rate at which children learn a simultaneous two-choice discrimination problem. The experiments were designed to test the following: (1) whether relative effectiveness of the VRCs was dependent upon task complexity or subject age; (2)…

Twenty-eight five- and seven-year-old children were reinforced for key pressing according to a DRL (differential reinforcement of low rates) five-second schedule of reinforcement. (Author)

Examines the relationship between probability learning and aging by studying the performance of 48 young and 48 old adults in a probability learning task which used different reinforcement procedures and material rewards. (CM)

Background: The underlying behavioral/psychological processes of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are unclear. Motivational factors, related to dopamine dysfunction, may play an important role in the development of the behavioral symptoms. Particularly, infrequent, but not frequent, reinforcers have been suggested to be associated with…

In a 1964 investigation of the effects of age and memory on problem solving, using subjects from age three to age nineteen, it was found that the youngest and oldest subjects performed a three-choice probabilistic task significantly different from the "middle-age" children (7 to 9 years old). The three-choice task was an apparatus with a…

Experiment was designed to teach the oddity principle to preschool age children whose age peers in earlier studies have had difficulty learning the oddity principle. (Authors)

Students' interest in comparing their work to their peers' work was studied at different grade levels and in different motivating situations. The importance of the situational variables differed in two experiments on social comparison interest; awareness of the situational influences on motivation appear to increase with age. (GDC)