Satiation and Setting-Condition Components of Social Reinforcer Effectiveness

Abstract

BERG, BERTHOLD; BALLA, DAVID; and ZIGLER, EDWARD. Satiation and Setting-Condition Components of Social Reinforcer Effectiveness. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 715-721. In an effort to replicate and extend Gewirtz's deprivation-satiation findings concerning social reinforcer efficacy, in Experiment 1, 2 groups of children received either 0 or 30 noncontingent social reinforcements prior to a criterion preference-learning task. On the criterion task, half the children in each precriterion condition were reinforced for performance, while half were not. Contrary to Gewirtz's results, precriterion satiationdeprivation did not influence responsiveness to reinforcement on the criterion task. However, children reinforced on the criterion task showed more evidence of a modification of preference than children not reinforced. In a second experiment, setting conditions were established in which children received either 0 or 30 noncontingent social reinforcements on 2 successive days. On the third day, half the children in each setting-condition group received 0 reinforcements immediately prior to Gewirtz's criterion task, while the other half in each setting condition received 30 precriterion reinforcements. Setting condition was found to influence social reinforcer effectiveness, while precriterion reinforcement was not.