Background: Youth and adults with psychopathic traits display disrupted reinforcement learning. Advances in measurement now enable examination of this association in preschoolers. The current study examines relations between reinforcement learning in preschoolers and parent ratings of reduced responsiveness to socialization, conceptualized as a…

Social information gathering by infants 6 and 12 months old was examined as a foundation for later social learning that may be uniquely human. Infant performance on a contingency/extinction task was studied following a caregiver demonstration of the contingency on varied reinforcement schedules. Infants who observed caregivers receive any…

This study investigated the effect of being imitated on the behavior of preschool children. Twenty-two children were employed in a "marble game," which consisted of dropping a marble into one of three holes in a wooden box. Procedure trials occurred across four phases in an ABAB design: baseline, imitation, reversal, and imitation again. During…

One of the focal points of this study is the investigation of the relationship between rates and types of imitative responding and responsiveness to social reinforcement (approval). Subjects were 96 children (5 to 6 years old) equally divided according to sex and race (Negro and white). Findings indicate that: (1) it seems tenable to assume that a…

This paper was presented at the 1970 International Joint Conference sponsored by the American Geographical Society and the American Division of the World Academy of Art and Science held in New York City. The author postulates that education can be accountable to a changing world scene by offering students a relevant education so they may…