OPEN ENVIRONMENT DESIGN FOR INFANT AND TODDLER DAY CARE

Group care settings for dependent people must be organized to facilitate delivery of responsive care and to prevent inadvertant neglect or deliberate abuse. Accordingly, in an infant and a toddler day-care center, an open environment was examined as a means to increase the visibility of children to staff and of staff-child interactions to the supervisor, and to investigate potential adverse effects of the open environment on infants' and toddlers' activities. These studies demonstrated that: (1) an open environment markedly decreased the amount of time a child could not be seen by any adult and the amount of time staff members' activities were not visible to the supervisor, and markedly reduced the effort required to supervise those who were not immediately visible; (2) an open environment did not adversely affect the sleep of either infants or toddlers; and (3) an open environment is as conducive to small group pre-academic activities with toddlers as is a separate room. These studies convinced us that infant and toddler day care can and should be accomplished in an open environment.     

Peer tutoring among elementary students: educational benefits to the tutor

To determine whether tutoring might be academically beneficial to the tutor, this study investigated the acquisition of spelling words by three elementary students in a peer tutoring program. The experimental design allowed a simultaneous comparison of each child's gain in performance on comparable word lists on which the child tutored another child, was tutored by another child, or neither gave nor received tutoring. The children's spelling improved nearly an equivalent amount on those words on which they tutored another child as on the words on which they were tutored; no such change was noted on the words on which they neither gave nor received tutoring. These findings, that peer tutoring is profitable for the tutor as well as the tutee, provide a basis for recommending peer tutoring as one method of individualizing education.     

CONTINGENT OBSERVATION: AN EFFECTIVE AND ACCEPTABLE PROCEDURE FOR REDUCING DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR OF YOUNG CHILDREN IN A GROUP SETTING1

Since a major task of childhood is learning to get along in a group without disrupting other children's activities, caregivers need explicit guidelines for gentle but effective procedures for dealing with disruptive behaviors in child-care settings. In a day-care center for normal 1- and 2-yr-old children, an effort was made to develop a procedure that appeared sufficiently humane and educational to be acceptable to parents and daycare workers, and yet effective in reducing disruptive play behaviors. Caregivers used the occasion of disruptive behavior to instruct the child in appropriate alternatives, then had the child sit on the periphery and observe the appropriate social behavior of the other children, “sit and watch”, for a brief period before inviting him or her to rejoin the play activities. The effectiveness of this procedure was compared with a method commonly recommended for use with young children: instructing the child, then distracting or redirecting the child to an alternative toy or activity. Contingent observation, combining instruction with a brief timeout (from being a participant in an activity to becoming an observer of the activity), proved considerably more effective in maintaining low levels of disruptions and was considered by caregivers and parents to be an appropriate and socially acceptable method of dealing with young children's disruptive behaviors. Therefore, contingent observation can be recommended for general use in day-care programs for young children.     

Reduction of police vehicle accidents through mechaniically aided supervision

Tachograph recorders were installed in 224 vehicles of a metropolitan police department to monitor vehicle operation in an attempt to reduce the rate of accidents. Police sergeants reviewed each tachograph chart and provided feedback to officers regarding their driving performance. Reliability checks and additional feedback procedures were implemented so that upper level supervisors monitored and controlled the performance of field sergeants. The tachograph intervention and components of the feedback system nearly eliminated personal injury accidents and sharply reduced accidents caused by officer negligence. A cost-benefit analysis revealed that the savings in vehicle repair and injury claims outweighed the equipment and operating costs.     

The effects and side effects of punishing the autistic behaviors of a deviant child

Timeout procedures in the home and extinction and reinforcement of incompatible behaviors in the laboratory failed to eliminate the disruptive and dangerous climbing behavior of a deviant child. Punishment with electric shock was used to eliminate this behavior in the laboratory and then in the home. The effects were reversible and were restricted to specific stimulus conditions. A less severe form of punishment was used to eliminate the child's autistic rocking. Other behaviors of the subject were continuously measured in the laboratory to determine the side effects of punishment. No suppression of other behaviors correlated with punishment was noted. However, the rate of some behaviors increased when punishment was used to eliminate deviant behaviors, but these increases were, primarily, desirable.