The effects of verbal reinforcement combination on the performance of a four-alternative discrimination task

Abstract

Groups of medical patients from a Veterans Administration Hospital uninformed about the reinforcement procedures were given a 4-alternative verbal discrimination task under a Right- blank or Wrong- blank reinforcement condition. Although responses to a post-experimental interview suggested that a majority of the Right- blank S s misinterpreted the information value of blank , treating it as though it sometimes or always meant “Right”, their performance was significantly superior ( p blank group, in opposition to the results of prior studies employing problem-solving or 2-alternative discrimination tasks. In a replication of the experiment with college students, a number of Right- blank S s exhibited a similar but weaker tendency to treat blank as “Right,” However, no significant differences in performance related to reinforcement condition were found. Hypotheses concerning differences in S s' approach to discrimination tasks with two and more than two alternatives as related to S s' intellectual ability were discussed.