On the Acquisition of the Discounting Principle: An Experimental Test of a Social-Developmental Model

• Published in: Child development Vol. 59; no. 4; pp. 950 - 960
• Main Authors: Kassin, Saul M., Ellis, Shari A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, MA University of Chicago Press 01.08.1988; Blackwell; University of Chicago Press for the Society for Research in Child Development, etc; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Adults; Age groups; Biological and medical sciences; Child development; Children; Cognitive models; Control groups; Developmental psychology; Discounting; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Judgment; Motivation; Preschool children; Psychology & psychologists; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social psychology; Sociology; Human; Social development; Intellectual development; Acquisition process; Motivation; Social learning; Child
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.2307/1130261

2 studies were conducted to test a social-developmental model of discounting. In both, children of 2 age levels (5-7 years and 8-10 years) directly experienced an inverse relation between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Others were randomly assigned to an irrelevant-experience control group. Afterwards, all subjects participated in a social perception task designed to measure their use of the discounting principle. Experiment 1 showed that discounting increased according to the degree of similarity between the task situation and subjects' earlier experience. Discounting was also more evident in subjects' behavior than in their judgments and, in turn, than in their explanations. Experiment 2 demonstrated that, although the older children discounted consistently, the younger children discounted only after a relevant script-generating experience. Taken together, these experiments offer support for a social-developmental model that considers: (a) subjects' ages (their range of knowledge and level of cognitive development), (b) their social learning histories (relevant situation-specific experience), and (c) the kinds of "proof" elicited (behavior, judgments, or explanations).