Sustained responding under intermittent reinforcement in psychotic children

Area of Science:

• Child Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Assessing adaptive responding in abnormal children is crucial for understanding developmental and psychological challenges.
• Previous research highlights the prognostic importance of intelligence, social competence, and language functioning in abnormal children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe and validate a procedure for classifying abnormal children based on their capacity to sustain adaptive responding without consistent extrinsic reinforcement.
• To assess individual differences in tolerance for intermittent reinforcement among psychotic children.
• To explore the relationship between this capacity and established prognostic variables.

Main Methods:

• A novel procedure was developed to measure the tolerance for intermittent reinforcement.
• The procedure was administered to a group of 21 psychotic children.
• Correlational analyses were performed to examine the relationship between the new measure and existing indicators of intelligence, social competence, and language functioning.

Main Results:

• The developed procedure successfully classified children based on their ability to sustain adaptive responding without continuous reinforcement.
• A significant correlation was found between the procedure's output and measures of intelligence, social competence, and language functioning.
• These findings suggest the measure's relevance to prognostic indicators in abnormal children.

Conclusions:

• The experimental measure demonstrates clear relevance to potential deficits in sustaining adaptive responding.
• The findings contribute to distinguishing the construct of motivation from the construct of ability in abnormal children.
• The procedure offers a valuable tool for assessing a critical capacity in the psychological evaluation of children.