Smeets, P. M., & Striefel, S. (1975). The effects of different reinforcement conditions on the test performance of multihandicapped deaf children . Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis , 8 (1), 83–89. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1975.8-83

Four reinforcement categories were used: end-of-session reinforcement, non-contingent reinforcement, delayed reinforcement, and immediate reinforcement.

The participants were 45 deaf and hard-of-hearing children ranging from 11 to 18 years of age. All children had been excluded from regular education programs for the deaf and participated in a special program designed to remedy their academic and behavioral deficits.

The Raven Progressive Matrices were used for both a pretest and a posttest. Only the posttest involved the four reinforcement categories.

Of the four reinforcement conditions, immediate delivery of checkmarks for correct responses increased test performance the most.