Abstract
College students (72 male, 72 female) expected that parents would be more likely to follow children's behaving as requested with contact comfort, smiling, and pleasant tone of voice than children's not behaving as requested. If students' expectations reflect reality, then the results, in combination with previous ones, suggest that parents instrumentally condition children to behave appropriately in part by following children's appropriate behaviors with conditioned reinforcers (smiling, pleasant tone of voice) and then a primary reinforcer (contact comfort). This reinforcement situation should be particularly conducive to both the acquisition of appropriate behaviors and the continued maintenance of these behaviors in the face of long delays of contact comfort.
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