Reinforcement Sensitivity and Responsiveness to Performance Feedback: A Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

Variability in responsiveness to academic interventions is a common phenomenon in school psychology practice, but the variables associated with this responsiveness are not well understood. Reinforcement sensitivity, a generalized tendency to learn quickly in reward contingency situations, is one variable for increased understanding. In the present study, teachers completed a rating scale measuring their students’ sensitivity to reinforcement. The students then participated in a classwide performance feedback intervention in the domain of mathematics. The rating scale was found to be reliable and predicted students’ responsiveness to the intervention. Implications for future research on reinforcement sensitivity and responsiveness to intervention assessment strategies are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• curriculum-based assessment
• academic interventions
• personality assessment

This article was accepted under the editorialship of Dr. Charles A. Maher.

Preparation of this article was supported, in part, by a Science of Learning Center Catalysts Grant to the second author from the National Science Foundation (0350341). In addition, the authors would like to thank Derek Reed for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes

^a n = 15

^b n = 10

^c n = 25.

^a n = 15

^b n = 10

^c n = 25.

1. Reinforcement sensitivity as defined by Gray (1981) and as used in this paper should be distinguished from the definition given by scholars in the experimental analysis of operant behavior, who sometimes use the term to refer to a parameter of the generalized matching law equation. In this usage, individuals with higher “sensitivity to reinforcement” have response rates that more closely parallel reinforcement contingencies (see Kollins, Newland, & Critchfield, 1997). The relationship between these two usages is unclear, as no empirical research has, to our knowledge, investigated the correlation between self-report measures of Gray's construct and the operant behavior analysts’ measures of reinforcement sensitivity.