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DIRECT AND INDIRECT EFFECTS OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EVALUATIVE COMMENTS IN LEARNING
Abstract
This study examined the effects of reinforcement, punishment, and their combination in a learning task (i.e., a word association task). The reinforcement and punishment took the form of positive evaluative and negative evaluative statements respectively, which were judged by the participants prior to and after the experiment to be of moderate intensity. In addition to measuring the amount of learning, the experiment examined the side effects of these different treatment conditions by measuring the subjects' attitude ratings, estimates of their learning, and self-statements about the experiment, the experimenter, and the subjects themselves. Fifty-one undergraduate student participants were divided into three groups: reinforcement, punishment, and combination. The experimental task was to choose which of the two associates to a word would be chosen the most frequently by the general population. Feedback for this and each subsequent judgment was made following a predetermined arrangement related to the three experimental conditions. In the reinforcement or positive verbal feedback group, 20 of the 40 choices were judged "correct," which were indicated by a positive comment by the experimenter. The remaining 20 choices were "incorrect," which were followed simply by the comment "Let's proceed." For the negative verbal feedback group, "correct" choices were confirmed by a "let's proceed" comment; "incorrect" choices to the other 20 items were acknowledged by negative comments. The third group received both positive and negative feedback: "correct" choices generated positive comments, and "incorrect" choices received negative comments. Following the initial 40 choices (Task I), the participants were asked to remake each choice and give the correct answer in a second encounter with each item (Task II). After Task II, participants were asked to complete a mood rating and a self-statement questionnaire. As part of the debriefing for the experiment, the participants were asked their perception of the experiment and the experimenter; they were asked to indicate any verbal self-statements made, what aspects of the experiment were successful for them; and finally they were asked to estimate the number of correct choices they made. Following this debriefing the participants were asked to give their first two associates to the original stimulus words (Task III) to ascertain the effects of treatment upon "established" learning. The results disconfirmed the findings of earlier feedback studies done with children on discrimination tasks. Post hoc tests showed the combination condition to be superior to both the punishment and reinforcement conditions in learning on "incorrect" trials and the reinforcement condition to be superior to the punishment condition in learning on "correct" trials. Comparisons within the groups demonstrated that the "correct" choices for both reinforcement and punishment conditions were significantly better learned than were the alternative responses when "incorrect" choices were made. The association data indicated that punishment significantly lowered the probability of subjects using experimental words as associates. Mood scores significantly declined between pre- and post-testing for the punishment group. The self-statements which measured the feelings of the participants about themselves, the experimenter, and the experimental conditions were significantly lower for the punishment group than for the reinforcement group. The debriefing provided a rich amount of impressionistic data for further speculation. This study demonstrates that punishment in the form of negative evaluative comments is clearly deleterious from a variety of standpoints. In spite of recent judgments that punishment may be useful in learning, the present results at the very least suggest caution in its application.
Subject Area
Educational psychology
Recommended Citation
LEGGIADRO, DANIEL ALEXANDER, "DIRECT AND INDIRECT EFFECTS OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EVALUATIVE COMMENTS IN LEARNING" (1980). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8021347.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8021347