Correlated Reward at Different Stages of Learning

Following the lead of Skinner, the effect of reward administration as correlated with certain aspect of response has been studied in recent years. Most studies (Ferster & Skinner, 1957; Bower, 1960; Logan, 1960), using infrahuman Ss, tried to find the relationships between the mode of reward administration as correlated with certain aspect of response and change in the same aspect of response. More recently, using human Ss, several investigators (e. g., Lane, 1964; Liu & Chou, 1964; Liu, Chang, Liu, & Tang, 1965) studied the same problem of reward contingency. Obviously, with verbal instructions, this problem can be studied more effectively in a sense that the data thus obtained are less likely contaminated by the learning of reward contingency per se. In other words, with human Ss, more genuine effect of reward contingency on behavioral change can be studied from the beginning of an experiment.