Extinction of the Smiling Response in Infants as a Function of Reinforcement Schedule1

Scheduling of reinforcement has been investigated extensively in relation to the conditioning of non-social responses. The results of these studies indicate in general that a schedule by which reinforcement follows every response is less effective in maintaining performance of that response during extinction than is a schedule by which reinforcement follows only some of those responses (4). This investigation attempts to extend the study of frequency and patterning of reinforcement to the area of social learning and to cortically immature subjects. The purpose of the research is to evaluate the relative efficacy of intermittent as opposed to regular reinforcement upon frequency of smiling in infants. The use of an instrumental conditioning paradigm in this study is in contrast to past studies of the conditioning of the smiling response (2, 7, 8), all of which, though differing in methodology, have utilized a classical conditioning paradigm in conceptualizing results. The inappropriateness of this framework in accounting for response change over time is most clearly illustrated in the study by Dennis (2).