712 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

behavior of the child, noting that he was only quiet during his sleep and that this behavior had been consistently true of his waking state for 8 yr. When time-out from reinforcement was implemented, the mother noted in wonder that while in time-out, her autistic boy lay quietly on a couch and appeared to be quite calm and peaceful.

While the children seem to gain composure and control during isolation, and at times of ex- treme agitation actually request to be put in time-out, the use of the time-out procedure re- mains an effective punishment and maintains a reduction in the contingent undesirable behaviors. Warnings about having to go to time-out continue to be effective in stopping behaviors, and the youngster will often actively seek to avoid isolation by crying or fighting. The child's inconsistent behavior suggests that the time-out procedure acquires both punishing and reinforcing properties for the brain-damaged youngsters.

MICHAEL E . MURRAY Diagnostic and Evaluation Center Children's Medical Center 1935 Amelia Dallas, TX 75235

Comment upon Feingold and Mahoney's "Reinforcement Effects on Intrinsic Interest:

Undermining the Overjustification Hypothesis"

Feingold and Mahoney (1975) have: (a) misrepresented the "overjustification" hy- pothesis, (b) misconstrued the relevance of their study to this hypothesis, and, therefore, (c) provided readers with an incomplete and potentially misleading impression of the evi- dence concerning overjustification effects.

First, "the assertion that extrinsic reward necessarily undermines intrinsic motivation" (Feingold & Mahoney, 1975, p. 375) is a straw man. At no time have the proponents of the overjustification point of view even remotely implied such an assertion. They have said, on the contrary,

Certainly there is nothing in the present line of reasoning or the present data to suggest that contracting to engage in an activity for an extrinsic reward will always, or even usually, result in a decrement in intrinsic interest in the activity. (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973, p. 136)

Second, as the authors point out, their findings "do not rule out overjustification ef- fects" (Feingold & Mahoney, 1975, p. 375). In fact, since all subjects received the same experimental treatment in their study, it does not really speak to the hypothesis we inves- tigated. There were three different experimental groups in the Lepper et al. (1973) study. One group neither heard about nor received any extrinsic reward. The behavior of these C'control") subjects allowed us to separate the effects of our reward conditions from the effects of exposure to the materials, practice, "satiation," the passage of time, etc. A sec- ond group received an extrinsic reward unexpectedly and showed no subsequent decre- ment in interest. The "overjustification" effect occurred only for the third group, who con- tracted explicitly to engage in the target activity in order to obtain the reward.

Thus, our findings relate to the difference between the aftereffects of engaging in an activity in order to obtain a reward vs. those of engaging in the same activity for the same

BEHAVIOR THERAPY 6 (1975) Copyright © 1975 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 713

amount of time and receiving the same reward unexpectedly. It is this difference between experimental treatments (in the context of the experiment as a whole) that allows us to make the inference that subjects' attributions or self-perceptions may mediate the effects of reinforcement procedures on subsequent intrinsic interest. Obviously, one study cannot rule out all alternative explanations. Equally obviously, a study with only one treatment group cannot rule out any alternative explanation.

Third, the literature on this subject is already substantial and growing rapidly. Readers with more than a " token" interest in tangible reinforcement procedures should have access to this literature. We have dealt with several issues raised by Feingold and Ma- honey (including the literature on "reinforcement contrast' ') elsewhere (Lepper & Greene, in press), and hope that interested readers will consult that paper and/or the rest of the lit- erature concerning overjustification effects (e.g., Deci, 1975; Greene, 1974; Greene & Lepper, 1974; Greene, Sternberg, & Lepper, 1975; Johnson, Bolstad, & Lobitz, 1974; Kopel & Arkowitz, 1975; Kruglanski, Friedman, & Zeevi, 1971; Lepper & Greene, 1974, 1975; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973; Meichenbaum, Bowers, & Ross, 1968; O'Leary, Drabman, & Kass, 1973; Reiss & Sushinsky, 1975; Ross, 1975; Ross, Meichenbaum, & Bowers, 1974). In Feingold and Mahoney's words, "continuing research into the possibil- ity of 'undermining' effects is timely and highly relevant (1975, p. 376)."

REFERENCES Deci, E. L. Intrinsic motivation. New York: Plenum Press, 1975. Feingold, B. D., & Mahoney, M. J. Reinforcement effects on intrinsic interest: Under-

mining the overjustification hypothesis. Behavior Therapy, 1975, 6, 367-377. Greene, D. Immediate and subsequent effects of differential reward systems on intrinsic

motivation in public school classrooms. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1974.

Greene, D., & Lepper, M. R. Effects of extrinsic rewards on children's subsequent in- trinsic interest. Child Development, 1974, 45, 1141-1145.

Greene, D., Sternberg, B., & Lepper, M. R. Overjustification in a token economy: Imme- diate and subsequent effects of differential rewards on intrinsic motivation. Unpub- lished manuscript, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1975.

Johnson, S. M., Bolstad, O. D., & Lobitz, G. K. Generalization and contrast phenomena in behavior modification with children. Paper presented at the Sixth Annual Banff In- ternational Conference on Behavior Modification, March-April 1974.

Kopel, S., & Arkowitz, H. The role of attribution and self-perception in behavior change: Implications for behavior therapy. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 1975, in press.

Kruglanski, A., Friedman, I., & Zeevi, G. The effects of extrinsic incentives on some qual- itative aspects of task performance. Journal of Personality, 1971, 39, 606--617.

Lepper, M. R., & Greene, D. Overjustification and intrinsic motivation: Some implica- tions for applied behavior analysis. Paper presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psy- chological Association, Philadelphia, PA, April 1974.

Lepper, M. R., & Greene, D. Turning play into work: Effects of adult surveillance and ex- trinsic rewards on children's intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 31,479-486.

Lepper, M. R., & Greene, D. On understanding "overjustification": A reply to Reiss and Sushinsky. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in press.

Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. Undermining children's intrinsic ifiterest with extrinsic rewards: A test of the overjustification hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 28, 129-137.

Meichenbanm, D. H., Bowers, K. S., & Ross, R. R. Modification of classroom behavior of institutionalized female adolescent offenders. Behavior Research and Therapy, 1968, 6, 343-353.

BEHAVIOR THERAPY 6 (1975) Copyright © 1975 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

714 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

O'Leary, K. D., Drabman, R. S., & Kass, R. E. Maintenance of appropriate behavior in a token program. Journal o f Abnormal ChiM Psychology, 1973, 1, 127-138.

Reiss, S., & Sushinsky, L. W. Overjustification, competing responses, and the acquisition of intrinsic interest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 31, 1116-1125.

Ross, M. Salience of reward and intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, 245-254.

Ross, R., Meichenbaum, D., & Bowers, K. A brief summary of a case history of a correc- tional institution: Innovative treatment programs for delinquents. Unpublished manu- script, University of Waterloo, 1974.

DAVID GREENE Department of Psychology Carnegie-Mellon University Schenley Park Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Some Reactions to Issues Raised in Rosen's Paper on Initial Therapeutic Expectancies

Numerous studies have attempted to evaluate the extent to which the outcome of sys- tematic desensitization is influenced by the recipients' expectation of improvement. The most common strategy entails the exposure of fearful subjects to identical routines of desen- sitization after having provided different groups with differing instructions regarding the anticipated outcome of " t rea tment" (see Borkovec, 1973; Davison & Wilson, 1973 and Wilkins, 1973).

In some studies, differing instructions concerning the anticipated treatment outcome have been associated with differential treatment efficacy. When the outcome of desensitization is influenced, in the anticipated direction, by success- or failure-oriented instructions, differing subject expectancies may be said to have produced the result. Expectancy in this case is an intervening variable that relates instructional variations to systematic differences in treat- ment outcome and no interpretive problems are apparent.

In other studies, differing instructions concerning the anticipated treatment outcome have not been associated with differential treatment efficacy. When the outcome of treatment is not influenced by success- or failure-oriented instructions, subject expectancy does not qualify as an intervening variable because there are no differences on the " response" side of the general S-R equation. Failure to establish expectancy as an unambiguous intervening variable leads to interpretive problems. Nonsignificant instructional effects can be viewed either as a failure of expectancies to influence treatment outcome or as a failure of instruc- tions to produce differing expectancies.

For these reasons, several experimenters (e.g., Fishman, 1970; Miller, 1972; Nawas, 1972) have asked subjects to respond to postexperimental questionnaires designed to assess whether they believed or did not believe the version of expectancy instructions to which they were exposed prior to treatment. However, the use of questionnaires postexperimen- tally is made problematic by several factors, not the least of which is that actual treatment success or failure may influence the subjects' self-report of her initial reaction to the expec- tancy instructions. Problems attendant to the use of postexperimental questionnaires prompted Rosen (1975) to study the initial self-reported reactions of subjects to differing sets of expectancy instructions; reactions that presumably exist in subjects immediately

BEHAVIOR THERAPY 6 (1975) Copyright © 1975 by Academic Press, Inc.