Perceived maternal child rearing and effects of delayed reinforcement upon concept acquisition.

Abstract

Spence proposed that delay of reward, given reward expectancy, inhibits instrumental learning through frustration-produced competing responses. This proposal has received little support in experiments with human subjects. It was suggested that this hypothesis, as applied to younger human subjects, will be more tenable if two relationships between perceived maternal child rearing and subsequent child response to social reinforcement are considered: (a) Maternal control is positively related to general reinforcement sensitivity; (b) maternal nurturance is positively related to degree of anticipated positive outcome in a reinforcement situation. Support was found for the prediction that high-control-high-nurturance girls would learn concepts more slowly under delayed reinforcement conditions compared to high-control-low-nurturance girls. This finding was reversed, given immediate reinforcement. No differences between low-control groups differing in nurturance were obtained.

Maternal child-rearing experience and self-reinforcement effectiveness.

“…A standard procedure has been employed to separate late adolescents into classes of maternal child-rearing history based on filial ratings of the mother's control and nurturance behavior. Systematic relationships have been found between these child-rearing patterns and the effects of reinforcement under a wide range of external conditions including direct reinforcement (Heilbrun & Gillard, 1966;Heilbrun, Gillard, & Harrell, 1965;Heilbrun & Orr, 1965, 1966Heilbrun, Orr, & Harrell, 1966), withheld or reduced reinforcement (Heilbrun, Harrell, & Gillard, 1967;Heilbrun & Waters, 1968), vicarious reinforcement (Heilbrun, in press), delayed reinforcement (Heilbrun, 1969), reinforcement cues presented as interfering stimuli (Heilbrun, 1968), and projective responses to reinf or cement cues (Heilbrun & Tiemeyer, 1968). Based upon the success to date in relating child-rearing experience to external reinforcement effects, it follows that the former might also hold some functional ties with self-reinforcement effects.…”