Social reinforcement satiation: An outcome of frequency or ambiguity?

Abstract

Demonstrations of social reinforcer satiation have shown that the repeated occurrence of approval-assent events tends to diminish temporarily their reinforcement efficacy. This experiment independently evaluated the contributions of frequency of the signal and its ambiguity to the satiation phenomenon. One hundred second-grade children served at Ss. The primary treatments involved two levels of frequency of prior presentation of the social reinforcer (the word "right"), and two levels of signal reliability (discriminative and ambiguous). The results indicate that the higher levels of "satiation" had opposite effects, according to whether the event had recurred as a reliable, nonredundant signal, or as an ambiguous one. Extended use as a discriminative event served to enhance the effectiveness of the social reinforcer (p < .001), while extended use as an ambiguous signal reduced its effectiveness.