Determining preschoolers' preferences for choice-making opportunities: choice of task versus choice of consequence.

Individuals may prefer contexts with the option to choose between 2 reinforcing stimuli or between 2 tasks relative to contexts in which others select the same events. We evaluated children's preferences for conditions characterized by (a) the opportunity to choose between tasks and (b) the opportunity to choose between putative reinforcers delivered following the completion of a task relative to no-choice and no-reinforcement control conditions. Three of 4 participants preferred the consequence-choice condition; the task-choice condition was no more preferred than the no-choice condition in any case.