School psychology: a public health perspective : I. Prevention, populations, and systems change

Concerns regarding American schools and mental health services for children abound, including inadequate educational achievement, school violence, over-referral to special education and disproportionate placement of minorities into special education, under-utilization of mental health services for children, and a poorly coordinated system of child mental health services. All of the above concerns share two common attributes: (a) they are statements regarding populations, rather than specific individuals; and (b) they are best addressed by changing system-wide elements of psychological service delivery. We argue that, although conceptualizing school psychology as primarily an indirect service specialty (e.g., J. Sch. Psychol. 28 (1990) 203) has advanced our thinking about effective service delivery, conceptualizing school psychological services from a public health perspective will provide an even broader framework that can increase both the efficacy and efficiency of school psychologists' work.     

An Empirical Analysis of Interspersal Research: Evidence, Implications, and Applications of the Discrete Task Completion Hypothesis

Because assignment completion is often reinforced, researchers have posited that when students work on assignments with many discrete tasks (e.g., 20 mathematics problems), that each completed discrete task may be a conditioned reinforcer (e.g., Skinner et al., 1999). If the discrete task completion hypothesis is accurate, then relative task completion rates should influence choice behavior in the same manner as relative rates of reinforcement. In the current study, previous interspersal research was combined across experiments and regression analysis revealed a linear relationship between relative problem completion rates (RPCR) and choice in accordance with the matching law (Herrnstein, 1961, 1970). These results support the discrete task completion hypothesis and suggest that interspersing additional brief tasks enhances interval schedules of reinforcement. Theoretical and applied implications of the current study and the discrete problem completion hypothesis are discussed and directions for future research are provided.