Individual differences in children’s response to self- and externally-administrated reward

Behavioral self-control interventions with children have become increasingly prevalent in clinical research and practice in recent years. Self-reinforcement procedures in particular have been studied extensively, yet little is known about the factors influencing their efficacy. Both developmental and applied research in self-reinforcement indicate that certain characteristics of the child, particularly age, may be usefully studied a.s predictors of response to treatment. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether age and sex of the child were predictive of response to a self-reinforcement intervention, as opposed to external reinforcement. Experimental sessions took place with individual children in a school tutorial room. Sixty children were recruited through three elementary schools and randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Self-reinforcement (scoring their own work and awarding themselves tokens), External reinforcement (the -experimenter scored the work and awarded tokens), and Control (the experimenter scored the work but no tokens were awarded). Children were either 8 or 11 years old, and sex was balanced between conditions. Baseline data were collected on a brief, academic-like task. Children then worked on this task under one of the three conditions, and subsequently completed a Child Satisfaction Questionnaire to assess subjective response to the conditions. Data on both task and temporal generalization were collected. Locus of control and academic achievement data were also collected for each child. The number of correct responses on the experimental tasks were examined by analysis of covariance, using baseline performance as the covariate. Age was not differentially predictive of either immediate or generalized response' to the reinforcement conditions. Boys showed superior performance in the Self-reinforcement condition as compared to External and Control; girls' performance was not different between conditions. Children in the External condition showed superior overall performance on a generalization task. Questionnaire reponses did not correlate with task performance or questionnaire responses. The results indicate that, in a brief analogue intervention, the age of a child is not an important predictor of outcome. Girls and boys, however, may react differently to more or less adult control of a token reinforcement system. Directions for future parametric research of self-reinforcement procedures are discussed.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat