An Evaluation of Certain Incentives Used in School Work.

Abstract

Contrary to the belief that praise is a more effective form of incentive than reproof to use in the case of school children, the writer, in an experimental study 1 found that after one application the two, on the whole, were of equal value. These rather surprising results at once opened up the question of whether reproof, if used over a given period of time, would not lose some of its effectiveness. Previous studies, using the practice experiment technique with children as subjects, have shown that encouragement brought about increasingly better work throughout the period of practice, but no such studies are available to give us information in regard to the effect of the continuous use of discouragement. Kirby, 2 used 1350 New York school children from the Grades III and IV classes to determine the value of encouragement upon their performance in addition. He had each child practice adding for 75 minutes, but this time was distributed differently for the different groups. The form of encouragement used was the competition of each child with the record he made on the previous day's performance, and not rivalry with the other children of the group. The results obtained showed a median gain of 48 per cent, but as no control group was used, we have no means of determining how much of this was due to encouragement, and how much to practice.

Effects of praise and censure on normal Ss’ performance on a psychomotor task

“…This is questionable in view of the number of errors and omissions and the likelihood that increased motivation would not be maintained. It may be, as Hurlock (1925) found using praise and censure in an elementary classroom arithmetic progranl, that praise might eventually take the lead.…”

Effect Of Robot Utterances Using Onomatopoeia On Collaborative Learning

“…The robot acted in accordance with the screen of the learning system. Recent studies have reported that teacher encouragement affects learning motivation when learners solve problems [15]. Moreover, an agent's sympathy has been reported to improve the motivation of learners [16].…”

The Effects of Different Reinforcement Conditions on the Test Performance of Multihandicapped Deaf Children1

“…Studies designed to identify motivational variables that may increase test performance have used a variety of subjects, tests, and incentives. Most investigators (Ayllon and Kelly, 1972;Bergan, McManis, and Melchert, 1971;Edlund, 1972;Hurlock, 1925;Zigler and Butterfield, 1968) have reported that when responses are reinforced or when subjects were prevented from making many errors, test performance was higher than previous performance (and/or the performance of control subjects) under standard conditions. In contrast, Benton (1936) and Zubin (1932), and Tiber and Kennedy (1964) observed no significant difference in performance between subjects tested under standard conditions and those tested under reinforcement conditions.…”

“…Instead, most studies focused on the effects of particular types of reinforcers, such as praise (Bergen, et al, 1971;Hurlock, 1925;Roth and McManis, 1972;Tiber and Kennedy, 1964), tokens (Ayllon and Kelly, 1972), verbal reproof (Hurlock, 1925;Tiber and Kennedy, 1964), and candy (Edlund, 1972;Tiber and Kennedy, 1964) on test performance. In some of the studies (Bergan et al, 1971;Edlund, 1972;Roth and McManis, 1972), subjects received reinforcement immediately after every correct response.…”