Effects of mixed reinforcement contingencies on adults' control of children's behavior.
Attention only gives you control when it lands right after the target behavior.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adults played with children who had intellectual disabilities.
Sometimes the adults gave attention right after cooperative play. Other times they gave attention for no reason. Sometimes they mixed both ways.
The researchers watched who really controlled the game—the adult or the child.
What they found
Only the contingent attention gave adults control. Kids kept playing nicely because attention came right after the good play.
Non-contingent attention did nothing. Kids ignored the adult.
Mixed schedules left adults holding cues, not control. Kids learned to watch whether the adult was about to give or withhold attention.
How this fits with other research
Chou et al. (2010) asked kids which schedule they liked. Children picked earning their treats—even on lean schedules—until the schedule got too thin. Then they wanted free stuff. The two studies agree: contingency drives adult power, but kids still have opinions.
Hardesty et al. (2023) and Gomes et al. (2025) moved the test into classrooms. Synchronous, immediate attention beat non-contingent delivery for on-task behavior and rule-following. They extend the 1969 lab result to real school routines.
Diaz de Villegas et al. (2020, 2024) pitted synchronous against accumulated reinforcement. Immediate wins again, and kids prefer it. These newer papers keep the same punchline: right-after-behavior delivery works best.
Why it matters
If you want your praise to matter, tie it to the behavior—every time, right away. Free attention feels nice but buys no control. In mixed schedules, learners start reading you, not their own actions. Next session, pick one behavior, watch for it, and deliver your reinforcer the second you see it. Drop the random “good job” and watch your influence grow.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two severely retarded boys, each a member of a different play group, experienced three regimes of reinforcement from adults [contingent, noncontingent, and mixed (contingent and noncontingent)]. The agent of contingent reinforcement acquired stimulus control of the subjects' behavior; the noncontingent agent did not. The agent of the mixed schedule of reinforcement did not gain control, but aspects of his behavior came to function as cues. The mixed adult's withholding reinforcement in the absence of the target behavior (cooperative play) evoked cooperative play, whereas his presenting free reinforcement resulted in the subjects' remaining in their inactive, baseline positions.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1969 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1969.2-249