Effects of positive reinforcement and negative punishment on the acquisition and maintenance of corresponding reports from children on an academic task

• Grant number: 20/08061-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2021
• End date: April 30, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Mariéle de Cássia Diniz Cortez
• Grantee: Maíra Costa Gonçalves
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 14/50909-8 - INCT 2014: Behavior, Cognition and Teaching (INCT-ECCE): relational learning and symbolic functioning, AP.TEM

Abstract

Studies on do-say correspondence have shown that correspondence training using reinforcement is effective in producing and maintaining accurate reports. This study aims to compare the effects of positive reinforcement and negative punishment on the acquisition and maintenance of corresponding reports from children in an academic task. Six children will participate who will be exposed to a computerized math task. "Doing" will consist of naming an ordinal number, saying the result of a mathematical operation, or saying the number of stimuli presented in a figure. "Saying" will consist of clicking on a green or red square after assessing whether the answer was correct or incorrect, respectively. During the baseline, the report accuracy will be evaluated without using differential consequences. In the condition of Differential Consequences for accurate and inaccurate reports, participants will be divided into two groups: 1) Positive reinforcement of corresponding reports (gain of points contingent on corresponding reports and extinction for non-corresponding reports); 2) Negative punishment for non-corresponding reports (loss of points contingent on non-corresponding reports). At the end of each session, the child will choose an item according to his score. The maintenance of the effects of the variables will be evaluated in sessions without differential consequences conducted immediately after the end of the previous condition, 30 and 60 days later. A multiple baseline design across participants will be used and the data will be analyzed in relation to the percentage of accurate and inaccurate reports of hits and errors, in addition to the number of sessions to reach criteria in each condition.