This study compared the effectiveness of verbal and candy reward on the learning of 72 lower class, black preschool children. A combination of the two reward conditions was included to investigate if material reward had a distracting effect. The informational value of the two types of rewards was manipulated to determine if they differed in informational properties as well as in incentive value. The children learned most effectively when given verbal reward in comparison to candy reward; it did not appear that candy functioned as a distractor. No differences in informational properties in the two rewards were found. An appendix gives a review of the experimental literature. (Author)