THE LEARNING OF SHARING BEHAVIOR

Categorization by sex revealed that the poorer learning performance of the welfare-center children was more characteristic of boys than girls, and among initial nonsharers a higher percentage of nursery school children learned to share following specially devised learning trials using the incentive of social reinforcement.

Abstract

Sharing behavior was studied in 2 groups of preschool age children, 1 consisting of 10 boys and 10 girls, all white, at a private nursery school, and the other of 9 boys and 7 girls, the majority Negro, at a child welfare center for dependent and neglected children. In the pretraining situation, 50 per cent of nursery school children shared, as contrasted with 12 per cent of welfare center children. Among initial nonsharers a higher percentage of nursery school children learned to share following specially devised learning trials using the incentive of social reinforcement. Categorization by sex revealed that the poorer learning performance of the welfare-center children was more characteristic of boys than girls. A newly devised technique for studying children's sharing behavior is described in detail.