The Effects of Instruction and Reinforcement on Preschool Children's Decision-Making

The present study investigated the effects of instruction and reinforcement on preschool children's decision making. The participants were 94 children(48 boys, 46 girls) ages between 4 and 6 years selected from preschools of Shiraz. In the first phase, the Iranian Adapted Pre-school Short Form of Wechsler Intelligence Scale (Razavieh and Shahim, 2008) administered to participants. Then, the participants were assigned randomly into instruction, reinforcement and control groups and completed the Decision Making Task (Howse, 2003). The results indicated that children who were in the instruction group performed better in their decision making in comparison with reinforcement and control groups. The age moderated the effect of instruction on decision making strategies. The findings suggested that appropriate teaching strategies may promote preschool children’s decision making.