Do children prefer contingencies? An evaluation of the efficacy of and preference for contingent versus noncontingent social reinforcement during play

Abstract

Discovering whether children prefer reinforcement via a contingency or independent of their behavior is important considering the ubiquity of these programmed schedules of reinforcement. The current study evaluated the efficacy of and preference for social interaction within differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) and noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) schedules with typically developing children. Results showed that 7 of the 8 children preferred the DRA schedule; 1 child was indifferent. We also demonstrated a high degree of procedural fidelity, which suggested that preference is influenced by the presence of a contingency under which reinforcement can be obtained. These findings are discussed in terms of (a) the selection of reinforcement schedules in practice, (b) variables that influence children's preferences for contexts, and (c) the selection of experimental control procedures when evaluating the effects of reinforcement.

Keywords: concurrent-chains arrangement; contingency strength; differential reinforcement; noncontingent reinforcement; preference assessment.

Figure 1

Responses per minute for “Kevin” (first row) and “excuse me” (second row) during the contingent reinforcement schedule (CR; open triangles) and no-reinforcement schedule (no Sr+; filled circles) and cumulative initial-link selections during the preference assessment (third row) for Amy, Cia, Dee, and Ted across sessions. The data depicted prior to the phase line were collected during the efficacy evaluation, and the data after were collected during the preference assessment.

Figure 2

Responses per minute for “Kevin” (first row) and “excuse me” (second row) during the CR schedule (open triangles) and no-Sr+ schedule (filled circles) and cumulative initial-link selections during the preference assessment (third row) for Beth, Ed, Sam, and Lou across sessions. The data depicted prior to the phase line were collected during the efficacy evaluation, and the data after were collected during the preference assessment.

Figure 3

Responses per minute for “excuse me” (first row) and “Kevin” (second row) during differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA; open circles), noncontingent reinforcement (NCR; filled triangles), and extinction (EXT; filled circles), and cumulative initial-link selections during the preference assessment (third row) for Amy, Cia, Dee, and Ted across sessions. The data depicted prior to the phase line were collected during the efficacy evaluation, and the data after were collected during the preference assessment.

Figure 4

Responses per minute for “excuse me” (first row) and “Kevin” (second row) during DRA (open circles), NCR (filled triangles), and EXT (filled circles) across sessions, and cumulative initial-link selections during the preference assessment (third row) for Beth, Ed, Sam, and Lou across sessions. The data depicted prior to the phase line were collected during the efficacy evaluation, and the data after were collected during the preference assessment.

Figure 5

Mean contingency strengths for “excuse me” (dotted line) and “Kevin” (solid line) in the DRA (first and third rows) and NCR schedules (second and fourth rows) across progressively increasing window sizes for all children. All sessions from both the efficacy evaluation and preference assessment for each schedule were included in these analyses.

Figure 6

The number of response–reinforcer occurrences experienced in the last three sessions of NCR during the efficacy evaluation for “excuse me” (filled triangles) and “Kevin” (gray triangles) across progressively increasing window sizes for all children.