Martínez Lourdes, Estévez Angeles F, Fuentes Luis J, Overmier J Bruce
University of Almería, Almería, Spain.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2009 Aug;62(8):1617-30. doi: 10.1080/17470210802557827. Epub 2009 Feb 5.
Previous studies have demonstrated that discriminative learning is facilitated when a particular outcome is associated with each relation to be learned. When this training procedure is applied (the differential outcomes procedure; DOP), learning is faster and better than when the typical common outcomes procedure or nondifferential outcomes (NDO) is used. Our primary purpose in the two experiments reported here was to assess the potential advantage of DOP in 5-year-old children using three different strategies of reinforcement in which (a) children received a reinforcer following a correct choice (" + "), (b) children lost a reinforcer following an incorrect choice (" - "), or (c) children received a reinforcer following a correct choice and lost one following an incorrect choice (" + / - "). In Experiment 1, we evaluated the effects of the presence of DOP and different types of reinforcement on learning and memory of a symbolic delayed matching-to-sample task using secondary and primary reinforcers. Experiment 2 was similar to the previous one except that only primary reinforcers were used. The results from these experiments indicated that, in general, children learned the task faster and showed higher performance and persistence of learning whenever differential outcomes were arranged independent of whether it was differential gain, loss, or combinations. A novel finding was that they performed the task better when they lost a reinforcer following an incorrect choice (type of training " - ") in both experiments. A further novel finding was that the advantage of the DOP over the nondifferential outcomes training increased in a retention test.
先前的研究表明，当特定结果与每个要学习的关系相关联时，辨别学习会得到促进。当应用这种训练程序（差异结果程序；DOP）时，学习比使用典型的共同结果程序或非差异结果（NDO）时更快且更好。我们在此报告的两个实验中的主要目的是，使用三种不同的强化策略评估DOP对5岁儿童的潜在优势，其中：（a）儿童在做出正确选择后得到强化物（“ + ”），（b）儿童在做出错误选择后失去强化物（“ - ”），或（c）儿童在做出正确选择后得到强化物，在做出错误选择后失去一个强化物（“ + / - ”）。在实验1中，我们使用次级强化物和初级强化物，评估了DOP的存在和不同类型的强化对符号延迟样本匹配任务的学习和记忆的影响。实验2与前一个实验类似，只是只使用了初级强化物。这些实验的结果表明，总体而言，无论差异结果是差异增益、损失还是组合，只要安排了差异结果，儿童学习任务的速度就更快，并且表现出更高的学习成绩和持续性。一个新发现是，在两个实验中，当他们在做出错误选择后失去强化物（训练类型“ - ”）时，他们执行任务的表现更好。另一个新发现是，在保留测试中，DOP相对于非差异结果训练的优势增加了。
