Abstract
This study investigated effects of immediate positive reinforcement on undergraduate students' performance on the course examinations. Students' correct responses to oral short-answer questions in the first 15 min. of each class meeting were immediately rewarded by extra credits for final grades for the experimental group (n = 48). In the control group (n = 34) students' correct responses to questions were merely acknowledged without being given extra credits. Results indicated that students in the experimental group did significantly better on Tests 3 and 4, respectively, on course examinations than did control students, although groups did not score statistically differently on Tests 1 and 2, respectively, which were administered prior to the treatment.
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