The reinforcing effect of two spoken sounds on the frequency of two responses.

The reinforcing effects of various stimuli presented immediately following a response have been investigated largely with infra-human Ss. In the context of experiments using the operant conditioning paradigm, the accepted definition of the reinforcing stimulus is a stimulus introduced following a response that increases the probability of occurrence of that response. Despite this research utilizing infra-human Ss, there has been relatively little effort to identify reinforcing stimuli for human Ss. Many investigators have conditioned humans, but they have used only a few reinforcing stimuli. Thorndike demonstrated the effectiveness of 'right' and 'wrong' in increasing the frequency of different responses.' Hurlock demonstrated that praise and reproof significantly affected performance in the classroom situation.2 Other investigators have demonstrated that various stimuli would increase the probability of responding.3 Most of the research involving reinforcing stimuli with human Ss has, however, been designed to test problems other than the identification of reinforcing stimuli for human Ss. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of the introduction and omission of two spoken sounds following a pre-determined response on the frequency of occurrence of that response.