Influence of reinforcement on the paired-associate learning of retarded and nonretarded children.

The effect of presence and types of reinforcement (tangible, social, control) on PA-learning performance was investigated using 24 retarded and 24 nonretarded public-school subjects. A pictorial PA list (pictures used as stimulus and response items) was used. Stastical analysis of the data indicated that the influence of reinforcement on task performance was highly significant. Post hoc comparisons of cell means showed that the use of tangible reinforcement did significantly increase the performance of both retarded and nonretarded subjects. The results also indicated that the nonretarded subjects performed significantly higher than their retarded counterparts.