Discussion 185 



ances. However, the method has limitations. The limitations may be of 

 importance, i.e. not only is there a limitation of repetitive testing, but 

 also the kind of test appropriate to a 14-year-old does not allow enough 

 room for growth or status as would the test appropriate to a 34-year-old. 

 If we use a test that has unlimited ceiling so that a person can really 

 reach its top limits at adult years, we may frustrate the child so that he 

 gives up. Such a frustrating experience may be seen in Clay's data for 

 old people ; it is frequently seen in youngsters. They just will not try, and 

 in our culture we get more "no trying" today than was true 30 years ago. 



Danielli: Your attitude to motivation up to the moment has been 

 rather negative. Now, what happens if you try to use it positively and 

 give a reward that would be appreciated, e.g. getting the answer to the 

 64-dollar question might improve performance greatly; correspondingly, 

 people might fill in a football-pool coupon much better than they would 

 fill in the things in your assessment. 



Lorge: In our own researches in the United States we have tried the 

 influence of successive rewards, rewards in which the word was "right", 

 or "you are doing very well", as opposed to "here is a penny for a success- 

 ful pass, here is a nickel, here is a dime, and here is a quarter". The 

 amount of learning, as a function of each of the different rewards, was 

 approximately the same, with the 25 cents being somewhat less efficacious 

 than the nickels and other rewards; the 25 cents disturbs people, it is 

 too much! My general tendency is to generalize that the human is 

 organized to react to confirmation. Anything he does that gives him a 

 sense of adequacy and a sense of success is rewarding, whether it be a 

 nickel or a penny or just a nice word from a responsible person. 



Parkes: I think Dr. Welford is entirely right in saying that 

 middle-aged people are not very co-operative, they know their reactions 

 are failing a little and they are reluctant to have that fact dragged into 

 the light of day and analysed. That is one very real explanation of the 

 difficulty of getting subjects. But there is another possibility. As we get 

 older our time becomes much more valuable to us for the simple reason 

 that there is less of it to come and, therefore, we concentrate on the 

 things we are interested in and, of course, playing ball with experimental 

 psychologists may not have become one of our interests. I also agree 

 with Dr. Welford that when a member of the older age group does get 

 onto a job, he does his very best and also he may, as Prof. Danielli w T as 

 suggesting, appreciate and respond more to a possible reward. 



Lewis: It has been shown by Yerkes and Dodson that if people go 

 at certain types of job too keenly and energetically, they do worse than if 

 they went more quietly at it, as older people tend to. Surely Dr. Welford's 

 point about motivation in his groups derives from the fact that he was 

 dealing with a highly biased group selected for willingness; they were 

 all volunteers. If he had a truly representative sample of any kind, he 

 would not be able to count on that any more than one can, for instance, 

 in institutional groups who are like a captive audience. You are dealing 

 here with the temperamental and emotional changes as age advances 

 which will greatly influence people's willingness, as well as their capacity, 

 to participate in tests. 



