Individual differences in children's response to self-and externally-administered beward

Sixty children completed a brief arithmetic task under one of three conditions: self-reinforcement (scoring their own work and awarding themselves tokens), external reinforcement (the experimenter scored the work and awarded tokens), and control (the experimenter scored the work but no tokens were awarded). Children were in Grades 3 or 6, and sex was balanced between conditions. Grade was not differentially predictive of either immediate or generalized response to the reinforcement conditions. Boys showed superior performance in the self-reinforcement condition as compared to the external and control conditions; girls' performance in both reinforcement conditions tended to be superior to control. Consumer satisfaction and locus of control were not correlated with children's response to the conditions. The results indicate that, while grade was not an important predictor of outcome, there were sex differences in responsiveness to degree of adult control of the token reinforcement system.