RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHER ATTENTION AND THE “GOOD BEHAVIOR GAME” IN MODIFYING DISRUPTIVE CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR1

A variety of behavioral procedures have been employed in recent years to modify disruptive classroom behavior. Such methods have been developed with the belief that curtailing disruptive behavior would strengthen positive classroom performance. In this study, two procedures, the good behavior game and the teacher-attention method, were compared to determine short-run effectiveness. Four teachers (two fourth-grade and two fifth-grade) implemented both methods in their classrooms over a five-week period. Presentation of methods was alternated in a counterbalanced design to control for order effects. Each of the four classrooms consisted of 25 students. A time-sampling procedure was used to record the presence or absence of disruptive behavior within 15-second intervals. Disruptive behavior was defined as any talking-out or out-of-seat behavior without permission. The results indicated that both procedures were effective in modifying disruptive classroom behavior, but that the good behavior game reduced disruptive behavior significantly better than the teacher-attention method. In addition, all teachers preferred the game to the teacher-attention procedure. This reaction seemed related to the effort involved in initiating the two activities. The good behavior game required less effort on the teacher's part. However, use of the game alone raises certain ethical considerations. One such issue involves abuse of peer pressure. Also, there is a possibility that negative rules may tend to promote resentment. Positively stated rules would ameliorate that problem. Another relates to the possibility that some teachers might be carried away by the ease of the game's implementation to the extent that behavior control becomes the primary objective in the classroom. As a result, one might consider use of the game to maximize short-term change, but then phase out this procedure in favor of another method (e.g., teacher attention) for long-run effects.     

Predicting Perceptions of Victimization

Male and female subjects rated female victims of misfortune after observing videotapes of the victims detailing their injuries to doctors. Contrary to predictions of just wortd theory, subjects derogated culpable victims more than innocent victims. When observers identified with the victim, through political ties, derogation was reduced. It was concluded that responses to victims are described by a balance theory framework in which the observer's relationships to the victim and the victimizing agent determine whether (s)he will react to victims with sympathy or derogation. It was further concluded that these relationships can be predicted from an understanding of the social and political context shared by the perceiver and the victim.     

THE GENERALIZATION EFFECTS OF PARENT TRAINING ACROSS STIMULUS SETTINGS

Five parents of nonverbal children were trained in two home settings to modify antecedents and consequences to their children's vocalizations. Generalization effects of the parent training on both the parent's and children's behaviors under different stimulus conditions were investigated using multiple-baseline designs. Increases in parent prompting and reinforcing their children's vocalizations generalized only minimally to a new setting in the home where parent training had not occurred. Child increases in vocalizations produced by the parents in the training settings did generalize to this new setting in the home. There was minimal generalization of child vocalizations to a free-play setting at school. In a formal speech session conducted by a behavior specialist at school, only one child showed definite increases in acquisition rate as a function of the parents starting to train the sound at home.     

The design and evaluation of a worksharing system for experimental group living

Failure to share household chores equitably may be a major cause of the high failure rate of experimental group-living arrangements. A behavioral approach to worksharing based on a point system was implemented in one experimental group and its most important components experimentally evaluated. Experiment I showed that awarding credits produced more work than not awarding credits. Experiment II showed that making credits contingent on the outcome of a detailed inspection produced more work than awarding credits noncontingently. Experiment III demonstrated that awarding rent reductions contingent on credit earnings produced more work than awarding rent reductions noncontingently. Other evaluative data suggest that the resulting living arrangement is cheaper, more effective, and more satisfactory to the residents when compared to the most popular alternative living arrangements.     

Stimulus probability and same-different classification

Three experiments investigated the effect of stimulus probability on same-different classification time. In Experiments I and II, subjects made same responses on the basis of name matches of simultaneously presented letters. Half of the same trials involved letters that were also physically identical. Experiment I showed that the presentation probability of specific letters affected name matches and different responses, but not physical matches. Experiment II varied stimulus contrast as well as probability. Contrast had a main effect but did not interact with probability at any level of processing. In Experiment III, subjects were switched to the physical level of processing. Stimuli that now had the same name but differed in case were called different. In this condition, the probability effects obs(irved in Experiment II disappeared. These results are interpreted as demonstrating that stimulus probability has its effect during the process that derives the name of the stimulus from the visual representation. This process takes place before the name comparison is made, and the name comparison process precedes the determination of the different response.