Abstract
The experiment was designed to examine the effects of reward and punishment given verbally in class rooms_ of the 4th grade on achievement of calculating task. Rate among number of children given reward after the task, number of children given punishment after the task and number of children given neither reward nor punishment after the task was different for each 10 classrooms. The task was continued during successive 5 days.
Measures were the number of correct answers and the rate of correct answers to all answers for each day.
The results as were follows:
(1) Reward was more effective to increase the number of correct answers than punishment.
(2) Reward was more effective, as that was given to more children in a classroom, and that was the most effective when that was given to all children in a classroom.
(3) Rates of increasing of numbers of correct answers were low in the children who observed the others given reward, and the effect was stronger as the observing children was less.
(4) Rates of increasing of number of correct answers were high in the children who ovserved the others given punishment, and the effect was stronger, as the ovserving children was less.
(5) Only 1/3N groups and 1/3P grouup showed significant increasing of rates of correct answers.
From the above findings, it was supposed that reward, punishment and implict reinforcement had not only the function to facilitate learning butalso that to inhibit it, and that punishment had the stronger inhibiting function than reward, the inhibiting function was stronger as reward or punishment was given for fewer children, the inhibiting function of implicit reinforcement resulting from observing children given reward was stronger than that resulting from observing children given punishment, and the facilitating function of implicit reinforcement was stronger as observing children was less.
(6) There were no significant differences in both number of correct answers between the continuous reinforcement condition and the partial reinforcement condition.
