The effect of type of reinforcer and reinforcement schedule on performances of EMR students on four selected subtests of the WISC-R

An experimental study was undertaken with 120 EMR students to examine the effect on performance of three types of test item response reinforcers (token, verbal praise, verbal neutral), and two levels of reinforcement schedule (fixed and continuous ratio). Results indicated: (a) no interaction between type of reinforcement and schedule, (b) no main effect for type of schedule, (c) but a statistically significant positive effect on scaled scores for token and verbal praise reinforcers on the Arithmetic, Digit Span, and Picture Completion WISC-R subtests. No effect on Block Design scores was noted.