ABSTRACT
The finding that children in the model-punished group deviated more readily than children in the no-film group nevertheless merits an attempt at explanation. A clue is provided by the behavior of children who observed the no-consequences sequence. In comparison to a group of children who saw no film, the reward-movie group showed weaker resistance to deviation. A further condition involving a film that displays the reentry of a non reacting mother-figure is being employed in a current study of the influence of vicariously experienced response consequences. Why, then, in our study should response consequences primarily influence performance? The answer may be that consequences of responses to a social model serve only as discriminative stimuli signifying to the observer the permissibility or nonpermissibility of a response class within a given social context.
