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.     

Discrimination learning and stimulus generalization by impulsive and reflective children

The proposition that impulsive children inhibit expressive behavior less than reflective children was investigated by providing third grade impulsive and reflective boys with either differential or nondifferential forms or successive discrimination training prior to tests for stimulus generalization. Consistent with specific predictions derived from Spence's theory on the roles of excitation and inhibition, it was found that: (a) Reflectives acquired the discrimination more rapidly, (b) reflectives achieved a higher level of discriminative performance, (c) impulsives exhibited more variable response reates during the nonreinforced stimulus, and (d) the type of training interacted with the child's conceptual tempo to determine the elevation and shape of the post-discrimination generalization gradients. The results provide support for the construct validity of the Matching Familiar Figures Test of reflectivity-impulsivity.     

Normative location theory: Placement in continuous space

This paper selectively reviews an area of operations research, refered to as normative location theory, that deals with the placement of objects in continuous space. The computational procedures discussed in this literature require initially that a certain set objects be located a priori; the placement of the objects in a second set is then determined in such a way that the total “interaction” among the fixed and variable objects is minimized. A number of strategies appropriate for different distance functions are surveyed and a numerical example is given illustrating one particular iterative algorithm. Although the current versions of these location methods depend upon more than the nonmetric information contained in the proximity measures defined for all pairs of objects, they can be generalized, and consequently, several possible connections to nonmetric multidimensional scaling are pointed out.     

Components of the laterality effect in letter recognition: Asymmetries in iconic storage

A partial report procedure and a backward masking paradigm were employed to explore lateral asymmetries in components of letter recognition. Stimulus displays were displaced off-centre into the left visual field (LVF) or the right visual field (RVF). Visual field differences in the effect of a delayed backward mask indicated an RVF superiority in the rate of read-out or encoding. Comparison of masked and unmasked full report also yielded estimates of iconic persistence. The persistence of these peripheral displays was surprisingly brief, although it was significantly longer in the LVF (₅₇ ms) than in the RVF (₃₄ ms). Precueing by colour and by location produced a larger partial report advantage in the RVF, reflecting a superiority in selective sampling. With postcueing no partial report effect was obtained at any delay, and this failure was attributed to the briefness of the iconic persistence.