CONTINGENCY CONTRACTING WITH DELINQUENTS: EFFECTS OF A BRIEF TRAINING MANUAL ON STAFF CONTRACT NEGOTIATION AND WRITING SKILLS

A brief training manual was developed for the purpose of teaching child-care workers to contingency contract with delinquent youths living in residential care facilities. The manual was designed to require minimal supplementary training by a professional. In Experiment 1 a multiple baseline design was used to assess the effect of the manual on 4 child-care workers' contract negotiation and writing behaviors. Experiment 2 consisted of four A-B systematic replications. Behaviors were assessed within the context of analogue training simulations and generalization tests with delinquent youths. Results from the analogue simulations indicated that the manual was successful in increasing both types of behaviors to a level of proficiency that equaled or surpassed that of behaviorally trained graduate students, and results from the generalization tests indicated that the child-care workers were able to apply their newly acquired contracting skills with delinquent youths. Procedural reliability varied across child-care workers, but was usually high.     

On the functional role of the verbalization in correspondence training procedures

We investigated the functional role of the child's and experimenter's verbalizations in correspondence training procedures with toy play behaviors in a day-care center setting. Six children participated in a multiple baseline across responses and/or multielement design. Baseline conditions were followed by reinforcement of verbalization. This resulted in little or no change in responding, similar to findings of previous research. Experiment I isolated the child's verbalization as the variable under study. With an experimenter's prompt and postplay reinforcement held constant, the effects of including versus omitting the child's verbalization were examined. A contingency-space analysis revealed that the presence or absence of the child's verbalization exerted no influence on play with the target toy. In Experiment II, a condition in which no experimenter's prompt occurred was added. Results suggested that the complete absence of any antecedent verbalization, by child or experimenter, resulted in much lower rates of play with the target toys. Again, however, when the experimenter's prompt was included, no clear difference was noted between conditions in which the child verbalized and conditions in which the child did not. These results raise doubts about the commonly held view of correspondence training procedures as a method of promoting self-regulation.     

The effects of a variety of instructions on human fixed-interval performance

College students were instructed to press a button for points under a single reinforcement schedule or under a variety of reinforcement schedules. Instructions for a single schedule were either specific or minimal. Instructions on a variety of schedules involved specific instructions on eight different schedules of reinforcement. Subsequent to the varied training, responding under a fixed-interval schedule occurred at a low rate. Both the minimal and specific instruction training led to fixed-interval responding that was similar to the responding exhibited during training. These findings suggest that under certain conditions instructed behavior is sensitive to changes in contingencies.     

Correspondence between definitions and procedures: A reply to Stokes, Osnes, and Guevremont

Stokes, Osnes, and Guevremont's (1987) implicit definition of correspondence classes appears close to ours (Matthews, Shimoff, & Catania, 1987). Their definition, however, is fundamentally procedural and thus may have to be modified as experimental methodologies are refined. The advantage of our contingency-space analysis is that it is independent of specific procedures and focuses attention on problems inherent in some procedural definitions. Specifically, a contingency-space analysis addresses the issue of distinguishing specific instances from classes and reminds us that correspondence can be identified as a class only on the basis of observing a population of opportunities for say/do sequences in which the subject sometimes does not say.     

Group instruction with profoundly retarded persons: acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of a remunerative work skill.

We evaluated a group instruction program for teaching a vocational skill to profoundly retarded adults. The program involved designated trainer roles and both individual student-directed and total group-directed procedures. Results indicated that, following the program, participants acquired the skill of stamping addresses on envelopes, the skill generalized across an untrained type of envelope, and the skill maintained over time. The group activity was incorporated into the regular classroom without increased disruption and the participants earned a wage for their productivity. Implications for the development of a group instruction technology for severely handicapped persons are discussed.     

An experimental approach to language training in second language acquisition: Focus on negation

The effect of negation training in a second language on the expression of negation in the native language was investigated. Four-year-old children from bilingual (Spanish/English) homes who showed no expressive or receptive ability in Spanish negation and were either proficient or nonproficient in English negation received Spanish negation training. Children who were proficient in English negation maintained correct responses in English and showed increased correct responses in Spanish following simultaneous training in both languages or in Spanish alone. Children who were nonproficient in English negation demonstrated a decrease in correct English responses following training in Spanish alone; however, children who received training in English and Spanish simultaneously showed increases in correct responses in both languages. These findings suggest that language training programs with children learning a second language should consider the relationship of the two language training conditions (simultaneous vs. independent) with the child's level of native language proficiency.     

BEHAVIORAL TECHNOLOGY FOR REDUCING OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURES TO STYRENE

We conducted a test of the usefulness of behavioral methods to control occupational health problems by reducing workers' exposures to toxic chemicals. Four plastics workers were trained in nine behaviors selected for potential to reduce their exposures to styrene, a common chemical with multiple toxic effects. Behavioral measures indicated that the workers quickly came to emit most of the behaviors. Measures of air samples indicated that large decreases in exposures to styrene accompanied the changes in behaviors for the three workers who had been selected because they most needed relief from their exposures and because they had opportunities to control their exposures by the ways they behaved.     

TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS TRAINING WITH SOCIALLY ISOLATED,IMPAIRED NURSING HOME RESIDENTS

We evaluated the effectiveness of a comprehensive training program for enhancing the conversational skills of socially isolated, impaired elderly nursing home residents. A multiple baseline design across behaviors was used to train four subjects (aged 87, 85, 68, and 66), on four content-related conversational components: (a) expressing common courtesies, (b) making positive self-disclosures, (c) asking questions, and (d) making interjections and acknowledgments. Training procedures included instructions, modeling, behavior rehearsal, feedback, and reinforcement. Results showed positive effects with all four subjects; in two cases, changes were significant enough to affect untrained observers' perceptions of the elders' conversational skills.     

PREPARATION FOR EFFECTIVE SELF-REGULATION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENERALIZED VERBAL CONTROL

A correspondence training procedure was used to develop consistency between children's verbalizations and their subsequent behavior across increasingly remote settings and time. The interval of time between the verbalizations and the opportunity to engage in several target behaviors was systematically increased across four preschool settings. Probes of generalized verbal control of home behaviors were conducted throughout training and showed that generalization was obtained in the absence of any salient externally imposed contingencies after the children had reliably come under the control of verbalizations about preschool behaviors.     

Temporal distributions of responding during discrete-trial omission training in rats

Within-session temporal distributions of responding were investigated in three experiments using rats pressing a lever in a discrete-trial omission procedure. This schedule entailed 60, one-minute trials, and a sucrose solution was made available at the end of each trial in which no lever press occurred. In Experiment I, nonnaive rats acquired and maintained responding during this training. Moreover, the probability of a response during any session showed a strong and reliable tendency to increase from the beginning to the end of the session. These results were replicated in Experiment II, using naive animals. In Experiment III, alterations were made in the training procedure, including elimination of response-contingent and noncontingent stimulus changes. Results indicate that stimulus change may be sufficient to maintain low levels of responding whether or not this change is contingent on responding.