Acquisition and extinction of an instrumental response as a function of different reinforcement schedules and sex of subject.

摘要

The present study investigated acquisition and extinction of an instrumental response as a function of different reinforcement schedules and sex of subject. One hundred kindergarten children were each administered 40 acquisition trials on a single lever response apparatus. Five groups of 20 S&barbelow;s each were differentiated on the basis of whether they received a marble reinforcement on 100%, 70%, 50%, 30% or 10% of their responses. For an additional 30 trials, each of the reinforcement groups wore subdivided into an extinction group which ceased to obtain further reinforcement, and a control group which continued with the same percentage of reinforcement as received during acquisition. An additional 20 subjects received only 40 trials under 0% reinforcement. On each trial, measures of starting and movement time were taken.;The possibility of a differential effect due to sex was not suggested by the data.;The results demonstrated faster speeds for the 50% rewarded group as compared with the 100% rewarded group, and revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between the mean asymptotic movement speeds of the different reinforcement groups. In contrast to earlier findings using response speed as the dependent variable, evidence for extinction was found in that the movement speed of the extinction groups decreased relative to the continued acquisition groups. However, no consistent relationship was found between the five different extinction groups. The results were discussed in terms of Amsel's (1958) theory of frustration non-reward.