Evaluating the effects of a punitive audience versus a no punitive audience on the accuracy of children's verbal reports

• Grant number: 21/08930-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2022
• End date: February 28, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Mariéle de Cássia Diniz Cortez
• Grantee: Joice Cristina Cintra Silva
• 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

The present study will evaluate the effects of two different audience functions (punitive and non-punitive), whose discriminative functions will be established experimentally, on the accuracy of children's verbal reports. Four typically developing children from eight to 10 years old and two adults (confederates) will participate to act as audiences. "Doing" will consist of shooting a computer game target and "telling" will consist of reporting your hits and misses by clicking on one of the two colored squares displayed on the screen after each attempt (green to report hits and red to report misses). At the end of each session, the participant must report the number of points obtained during the task to the audience (punitive or non-punitive) in effect. The experimental conditions will be: 1) Establishment of punitive and non-punitive discriminative functions of the audiences, whose objective will be to establish, experimentally, the discriminative functions of the audiences (punitive and non-punitive); 2) Baseline, which will assess the correspondence of the report in the absence of different audiences and without differential consequences programmed for the reports and; 3) Test of the discriminative functions of the audiences, which will assess the correspondence of the report in view of the different functions of the audiences, without programmed consequences. An adapted alternating treatment design will be used to compare the effects of exposure to two different audiences and a multiple baseline design between participants to compare the effect of introducing different audiences in relation to the control condition. The data will be analyzed for the percentage of corresponding reports of hits and misses during the computer game and for the correspondence of the report on the total points obtained for the different audiences at the end of each session. (AU)