The Differential Outcome Effect as a Useful Tool to Improve Conditional Discrimination Learning in Children

The effects of differential outcomes and different types of consequential stimuli on 7-year-old children’s discriminative learning and memory

“…If this is the case, it follows that in those circumstances in which the effect is not obtained (for example, when a task is too easy to perform; e.g., Estévez et al, 2001Estévez et al, , 2007Plaza et al, 2011), this would not need to signify that the DOP is not working. By contrast, it might be that the expectancies of reward or prospective memory of what the upcoming reward will be were activated when differential outcomes are arranged but that a ceiling effect was masking the discriminative learning benefits usually observed under this condition.…”

“…Given that, as we have already shown, the DOE is not observed when the task is very simple (e.g., Estévez et al, 2001Estévez et al, , 2007Plaza et al, 2011), we decided to increase the difficulty of the discriminative learning task used by Martínez et al (2009) by presenting four comparison stimuli instead of two (for a similar task, see Estévez et al, 2001, Experiment 2).…”

Unique Outcome Expectations as a Training and Pedagogical Tool

“…Estevez, Fuentes, Mari-Beffa, Gonzalez, and Alvarez (2001) found that the DOE could also be obtained in older children (around 8 years of age), but only when the discrimination task was more challenging.…”

“…Thus, symbolic relation learning is fundamental to the acquisition of abstract concepts. Applying the differential outcomes procedure to the training of arbitrary, symbolic relations has also been shown to benefit a considerably wide range of individuals, not just individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities (e.g., Malanga & Poling, 1992) but typical children (e.g., Estevez et al, 2001) and typical young adults as well (e.g., Mok & Overmier, 2003. Given existing empirical results, the evidence is convincing for the universality of the differential outcomes training technique and encouraging for its potential usefulness in educational and therapeutic practices.…”

“…With respect to the t y pe of materials that can serve as effective differential outcomes, in individuals with learning difficulties and/or developmental disorders and in children in general, secondary reinforcers that are uniquely paired with primary reinforcers are particularly useful (e.g., red tokens in exchange for food vs. green tokens in exchange for toys in children; Estevez et al, 2001). A version of this found to be effective in both young adults (Miller et al, 2002) and elderly adults (Lopez-Crespo et al, 2009) is to follow each type of correct choice with an immediate unique outcome (e.g., photographs), whereby each delivery of this immediate outcome earns an entry into a lottery for unique prizes.…”