Effects of training students to identify the semantic base of prose materials

Feedback and feedback plus points toward a course grade were applied to the attentional behaviors (defined as the ability to identify the semantic base of text passages) of 30 undergraduate students participating in a reading comprehension development program. Correct underlining was increased, extraneous underlining was decreased, and postreading comprehension test scores improved as a result of the procedures. Scores on a standardized test of reading comprehension also increased significantly.     

EFFECTS OF CONTEXTUAL COMPETENCE ON SOCIAL INITIATIONS

The frequency of social initiations and satisfaction with interactions in three dyads, each consisting of 1 student with disabilities and 1 nondisabled peer, were assessed under two alternating conditions: Condition 1 assessed the interactions around a set of four trained computer games, and Condition 2 assessed interactions when students were playing a set of four untrained computer games. Training was conducted with a multiple baseline design across participants and was followed by social interaction probes using an alternating treatments design. The results indicated greater frequencies of social initiations by 5 of 6 participants, higher degrees of game satisfaction by all participants, and equal or higher degrees of peer satisfaction by 5 of 6 participants when playing trained games in comparison to untrained games.     

Teaching minority high school students to recruit helpers to attain personal and educational goals

Recruiting help from mentors and other potential helpers is a promising strategy for helping disadvantaged and minority youths meet their personal and educational goals. Three African-American high school seniors participated in a project designed to evaluate the effectiveness of training procedures that would allow them to ask for help in attaining educational and other personal goals. A behavioral training procedure that included instructional materials, role-play practice, praise, and feedback was used. Targeted skills included goal setting and 30 responses involved in the process of meeting with a potential helper. Role-play situations were used to evaluate participants' help-recruiting skills before and after training. Participants increased their help-recruiting skills from an average of 38% during baseline, to an average of 75% after training. Self-reported measures of goal attainment suggested that the students benefited from the training. Implications for mentoring programs designed to increase minority students' opportunities to reach educational goals were discussed.     

Increasing participation and improving the quality of discussions in seventh-grade social studies classes

An experiment was conducted to evaluate procedures to improve classroom discussions in seventh-grade social studies classes. An increased number of students participated in discussions when rules were stated for discussions, students were praised for their contributions, the teacher restated or paraphrased students' contributions aloud or on the blackboard, the teacher planned an outline of discussion questions, student contributions to discussions were recorded and were used to determine part of the students' grades for the class, and discussion grades were publicly posted.The second part of the study focused on procedures designed to improve quality of classroom discussions. Students were taught to participate in discussions by providing reasons for their statements, comparisons between different points, or examples supporting their statements. As each type of contribution was taught, recorded, and counted toward part of the students' classroom grades, each type of contribution increased. Ratings of discussions by outside judges consisting of junior high school teachers, junior high school students, and persons experienced in conducting discussions, indicated that the training increased the overall quality of the discussions. Use of the quality training procedures, however, resulted in decreased levels of overall participation in discussion, a decrease that was reversed by the use of a group contingency for participation. Finally, the discussions after training seemed to be preferred by both the teacher and the students.     

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.     

A multi-element analysis of the effect of teacher aides in an "open"-style classroom

Open classrooms with few rules, individualized instruction, and informal class organization present new problems for the application of behavior principles. The effects of three types of teacher aides on student achievement and on-task behavior were studied. Each was compared with a standard no-aide condition. Subjects were 54 third graders in two "open"-style classrooms. The three types of aide, helping adult, disciplinary adult, and helping fifth-grade aide, were compared in a multi-element design with a no-aide control. The helping-adult aide significantly affected the academic output of the class, when compared with the no-aide condition. All aide conditions produced more academic work and on-task behavior than did the standard no-aide condition.     

Reducing residential electrical energy use: payments, information, and feedback

Monetary payments, energy information, and daily feedback on consumption were employed to reduce electricity use in four units of a university student housing complex. A combined multiple-baseline and withdrawal design permitted both within- and between-unit comparisons. Payments produced immediate and substantial reductions in consumption in all units, even when the magnitude of the payments was reduced considerably. Feedback also produced reductions, but information about ways to conserve and about the cost of using various appliances did not. It was also found that, in general, payments combined with either information or feedback produced no greater effect than payments alone.     

SHORT- AND LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF CONTINGENCY MANAGED INSTRUCTION ON LOW,MEDIUM, AND HIGH GPA STUDENTS1

Undergraduate students had been assigned to a contingency managed course or a conventional lecture course (Du Nann and Fernald, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1976, 9 , 373–374). Two years later, some 35% (N = 86) of the original classes responded to a letter offering them $2.00 to participate in a study of their educational experiences. These students completed a multiple-choice test on material from the course, and answered questions about activities and attitudes that might have been affected by the experience in Introductory Psychology. In the contingency management course 2 yr past, students were tested each week on a chapter of textbook material with 10-item multiple-choice quizzes. The course employed a modified “Doomsday Contingency”, requiring each student to achieve 80% mastery on one of the four weekly quizzes or drop the course. Quizzes were given in small groups and scored individually, while the student stood near, by an undergraduate proctor assigned to that group. The proctor was asked to show interest in the students' quiz performances, help clear up difficult areas, and develop a friendly working relationship with each student. While many students passed the quiz on the first attempt, others were given individual tutoring, so that no one was in fact forced to drop the course. In addition to the weekly quiz assignment, students in the contingency managed group were asked to attend one lecture each week. While the contingency management course procedures had much in common with PSI (Keller, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1968, 1 , 79–89), several departures made them unique. First, self-pacing was curtailed because students were required to master one unit per week or drop the course. Second, proctors met with students in small groups, usually giving individual tutoring only to those students who did not pass the quiz on the first attempt. Finally, students were asked to attend one lecture per week. Students in the conventional lecture group were not asked to pass weekly quizzes, but instead attended three 50-min lectures each week. Two of these lectures followed the textbook material closely, while the third, which was also attended by students from the contingency management course, covered material only indirectly related to the text. This partition of lecture content allowed material to be similar across the two instructional groups. Although students in the lecture condition were told they could obtain copies of the quizzes, few of them did so. Course grades were determined by scores on two 45-item multiple-choice hourly exams, each covering half the semester material (each worth 25%), and by a 90-item final exam, which served as a measure of short-term retention. Before analyzing the follow-up data, several characteristics of the returning students were compared to determine the comparability of the sample from the two original classes. Most important, both attrition and the current mean GPAs of students from the two classes were very similar. These considerations, and others, suggested there was no systematic sampling bias to confound comparisons of student performance. A 2 (contingency management versus traditional lecture) by 3 (high, medium, and low GPA) analysis of variance was computed on the course final-exam scores and the follow-up measures. Instructional procedure and GPA interacted on the final exam such that low and medium GPA students performed significantly better under contingency management, but there was no significant effect of instructional procedure with high GPA students. On the 2-yr retention measures, students from the contingency management course performed significantly (p < 0.01) better on items drawn from quizzes used in their original course, and marginally better (p < 0.10) on items drawn from the final exams, but no interactions with GPA appeared. Furthermore, instructional method produced no significant main effects or interaction with how many students became majors or minors in psychology, how many psychology courses were later taken, how many books in psychology were reported to have been read, or on students' evaluation of the interest and importance of psychology.     

Facilitating paper recycling: effects of prompts, raffles, and contests

The effects of prompts and reinforcement to promote paper recycling were compared in six university dormitories. For a Prompt condition, residents were urged to recycle paper for ecological reasons via flyers distributed to each room. For a Raffle contingency, residents were given one raffle ticket for every pound of paper brought to a collection center. For a Contest contingency, two dorms were paired and the dorm whose residents delivered the most paper won $15 for its treasury. Contingency awareness was strengthened via a flyer placed under the door of each resident's room. Flyers alone had little effect in increasing paper-recycling behaviors, but the raffle (substantially) and the contest (somewhat) increased the amount of paper brought to a dorm's recycling center. Students whose rooms were closest to the collection center showed the greatest participation. Removal of the reinforcement contingencies resulted in a return to baseline levels.     

Producing a change from competition to sharing: effects of large and adjusting response requirements

Pairs of high-school students matched-to-sample for money. On each trial, the first pair member to complete a fixed ratio of knob-pulling responses could work the matching problem on that trial. Competition occurred when both pair members responded for the problem. Sharing occurred when only one pair member responded on each trial, and the subjects alternated trials. Hence, sharing requires less responding and still allows a moderate number of reinforcers for each subject. Recent research has shown that increasing the response requirement to the point that it may have aversive properties will produce a change from competition to sharing. A related variable is an adjusting schedule that adjusts the subjects' response requirements so that their abilities to take reinforcers are equal. In this way, subjects might learn that competition requires more responding but produces no more reinforcers. However, recent research also suggests that competition decreases over sessions without experimental manipulations. Because of this possibility of a time-related variable, ratio size and an adjusting schedule were studied in a group design. Competition did decrease for all groups over sessions, but the large-ratio groups switched from competition to sharing sooner than the low-ratio groups. The adjusting schedule had a similar but smaller effect.