Praising child compliance: reinforcement or ritual?

Full Abstract

Praising child compliance is a common therapeutic recommendation to parents with noncompliant children. There are currently no studies documenting the independent contribution of the praise component to successful parent training programs. Three projects were designed to evaluate the hypotheses underlying the use of contingent praise routines. Namely, it has been suggested that conduct-disordered children are relatively unresponsive to adult approval at pretreatment, yet become responsive by posttreatment. In contrast to the hypotheses, data indicated that child compliance levels were not associated with child responsivity to maternal social reinforces; noncompliant children were responsive to maternal praise both before and after treatment; child responsivity to maternal praise did not covary with successful treatment; previously noncompliant but successfully treated children continued to comply to maternal instructions after contingent praise was withdrawn; a nonclinic child demonstrated extensive compliance persistence in the absence of contingent praise. Praising child compliance appeared to be more of a polite ritual than an active therapeutic component for altering noncompliance.

Author information

Author/s: Roberts, M W (MW);

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of abnormal child psychology (J Abnorm Child Psychol), published in UNITED STATES. (Language: eng)

Reference: 1985-Dec; vol 13 (issue 4) : pp 611-29

Dates: Created 1986/02/19; Completed 1986/02/19; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 4078190, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.