THE EFFECT OF TEMPORAL INTERVALS OF REINFORCEMENT UPON DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE GENERALIZATIONS Cooperative Research Project No. S-271

Using verbal material, this study explored the effect of the temporal interval of feedback as it interacted with two other variables: (1) method of presenting learning matena! (inductive or deductive), and (2) activity of the learner during the delay interval (activity relevant or irrelevant to the materia. The major objective was to compare the effect of immediate versus delayed feedback of knowledge upon the learning of principles, using principles typical of the content of lower division college instruction. The subjects were 277 lower division college students selected from a large introductoryipsychology class. The universal superiority of immediate reinforcement did not appear. The educational implications are: (1) the usual assumption of the efficiency of immediate reinforcement is not valid with respect to academic instruction; and (2) the apparent superiority of delayed knowledge reinforcement with deductive learning and immediate knowledge reinforcement with inductive learning may be utilized across