The effects of social reinforcement and audience presence upon the motor performance of boys with different levels of initial ability.

High-and low-ability subjects were tested for 25 trials on a stabilometer balancing task in order to investigate the interaction effect of audience and social reinforcement conditions upon complex motor performance. Audience (passive audience, no audience), social reinforcement (positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, no reinforcement), and initial ability level (high, low) were incorporated in a 2 × 3 × 2 design. The performance data were blocked into five blocks of five trials each for analysis. Although there were no significant audience and social reinforcement effects over all trials, in later performance (Blocks 4-5) the positive reinforcement group performed significantly better than the no-reinforcement group, with the negative reinforcement group performing at an intermediate level.