To examine the formation of new responses by self-reinforcement (SR), 48 preschoolers (five-year-olds) and 48 third graders (eight-year-olds) were asked to choose one of the four geometric figures, under the conditions of verbal self-reinforcement (V-SR), material self-reinforcement (M-SR), or non self-reinforcement (N-SR). A measure taken was the rate of successive choices of the same figures self-reinforced over the trials. Both V-SR group and M-SR group performed significantly better than N-SR group, but no increment was found over trials. It seemed that V-SR was functionally equivalent to M-SR in five-year-olds, while V-SR was more dominant than M-SR in eight-year-olds. The number of SR made by five-year-olds in both V-SR group and M-SR group was more than that of eight-year-olds.
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