Six male students, ages 7-9 years, from an in-school tutoring program for learning disabled children, served as subjects in a study to test the validity of The Dunn-Rankin Reward Preference Inventory (DRRPI). The DRRPI shows a student's ranked order of preference of five reward categories. The DRRPI was administered at the beginning, middle, and end of a 35 day study to determine if the students' initial reward preferences changed and to determine if individually preferenced rewards had any effect on the number of previously unknown Dolch Sight Words recognized per session. Each student's high, middle, and low reward preferences, as initially determined by the DRRPI, were systematically manipulated during a minimum of 21 sight word sessions per student to determine this effect. The words learned under each reward condition were recorded and each student was given an immediate and 7-10 day follow up posttest condition. Results from the three administrations of the DRRPI indicated that slight but no significant changes occured in the students' reward preferences. Individual graphs recorded after each daily sight word session demonstrated that the rank order of reward preference made no significant differences in the number of sight words recognized on a daily basis. Data from the follow up posttest indicated that the results in percent of Dolch Sight Words remembered and consistent with the percent of Dolch Sight Words remembered on the immediate posttest except for student #1 and #3 who were effected by situation in their own classroom that occured during the day of the posttest. Results showed no significant difference in the percent of words remembered based on reward preferences.
Data taken from the pre and posttest of the 220 Dolch Sight Word list, Dolch Noun list and Scott Foresman 2-1 list for two subjects showed that all of the students increased the number of identifiable words but the results of this study suggest that rewards are effective teaching tools but individually preferenced rewards as determined by the Dunn-Rankin Reward Preference Inventory make little difference in the percent of previously unknown Dolch Sight words and Dolch Nouns learned and remembered by these students.