Accession Number:

AD0743213

Title:

The Fort Ord Merit-Reward System

Descriptive Note:

Corporate Author:

ARMY TRAINING CENTER ENGINEER AND FORT LEONARD WOOD MO

Personal Author(s):

• Datel, William E.

Report Date:

1972-06-08

Pagination or Media Count:

26.0

Abstract:

The paper describes the development of a program of contingency management incentive manipulation in recruit training at Fort Ord, California. This program is called the Merit-Reward System MRS. The MRS can be viewed as an applied outgrowth of behaviorism, specifically Skinnerian operant conditioning in a social system. The MRS was developed by conducting reinforcement surveys of the recruits, selecting those incentives rated as very strong and which could be manipulated, devising means for assigningrecording secondary reinforcement token allocation, selectingdefining the behaviors to be shaped and maintained i.e., rewarded, communicating the system to the participants, and constructing means for monitoring the execution of the system.

Descriptors:

• *ARMY PERSONNEL
• *ARMY TRAINING
• *MOTIVATION
• APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• CONDITIONED RESPONSE
• PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

Subject Categories:

• Humanities and History

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE