Effects and Side-Effects of Adults’ Reaction to Children: An Experimental Analysis

Abstract

How do adult-child interactions affect children’s relationship with adults? Do these interactions determine adults’ stimulus value? This paper discusses a program of research designed to study these questions. The research strategy that was used involved providing children with carefully programmed interactional histories with previously unfamiliar adults and then determining how these interactions affect the adults’ relationships with the children. Not only did the adults acquire strong discriminative properties, they also obtained differential stimulus value as a function of their serving as agents of rein­forcement. The results are discussed in terms of social side-effects of behavior modifi­cation.