The present study investigated the contribution of an adult's expressive behavior and type of verbal reinforcement to children's learning. An adult female interacted in a warm or cold manner with 120 third-grade, middle-class children, while at the same time giving one of two reinforcers—“correct” or “nice”—for one of two responses in a simple two-choice learning situation. The warm adult was more effective in inducing learning than the cold, and “correct” was a more potent reinforcer than “nice.”
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