The effects of self-regulation training on the academic productivity of secondary students with learning problems

Four self-regulation skills were taught in a series of student-teacher conferences to eight learning disabled (LD) and three non-disabled (NLD) adolescents in an alternative high school. All participants had a prior history of school failure and low lesson-completion rates. The skills taught were behavior contracting, self-recording, self-monitoring, and self-reinforcement. Self-instructional materials in reading, writing, and math were used as the curriculum, and the dependent variables in the study were the number of lessons completed per student per day in the three academic areas. Multiple-baseline designs across students and across academic areas were employed to assess the effects of the self-regulation training and the students' application of the self-regulation skills on lesson completion. Results indicate that all participating LD and NLD students substantially increased their rate of lesson completion after the intervention. These increases occurred in the academic areas targeted by the students for the application of the self-regulation skills. Thus, self-regulation interventions hold promise for bringing at-risk students into contact with the school curriculum.     

APPLICATION OF THE “GENERALIZATION MAP” TO A SELF-CONTROL INTERVENTION WITH SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN

The assessment of generalization has become a priority of applied behavior analysis. This study provided a thorough assessment of the generality of a comprehensive self-control intervention. This intervention incorporated a number of self-management skills and was designed to increase the math performance of an underachieving student in a regular elementary school classroom. All possible classes of generalization as outlined by Drabman, Hammer, and Rosenbaum (1979) were assessed. An ABAB design with follow-up was used to determine the effectiveness of the intervention for the treated student's math performance in the school setting as well as the degree of generalization across the following untreated dimensions: behavior (disruptiveness); setting (home); subject (classmate); and time period (follow-up). The effective intervention produced: subject, behavior, subject-behavior, setting, subject-setting, behavior-setting, subject-behavior-setting, time, subject-time, setting-time, subject-setting-time, and subject-behavior-setting-time generalization. Generalization was not obtained for behavior-time, subject-behavior-time, and behavior-setting-time generalization. Features of this intervention which may have promoted generalization are discussed.     

Delay and amount of reward in a concurrent chain

Eight pigeons responded under a concurrent-chain schedule for rewards differing in both delay and amount, the larger reward being associated with the longer delay. Preference was examined as the absolute durations of the terminal-link delays were increased at four different delay ratios. Difficulties with other experiments of this type were controlled for by the use of (a) a single-tape initial link to equalize terminal-link entries, (b) a blackout following the more immediate reward to equalize terminal-link length, and (c) a photocell to measure reinforcer duration more accurately. Preference for the larger reward changed systematically as delays increased in all conditions, decreasing for the 6:1, 3:1, and 3:2 ratios, and increasing for the 1:1 ratio. These results were similar to, but significantly different from, those of previous investigations. The implications of these results for various models of concurrent-chain behavior are discussed.     

BEHAVIORAL SELF-CONTROL OF STUTTERING USING TIME-OUT FROM SPEAKING

Research has shown that stuttering may be attenuated by a variety of response-contingent consequences. To date, however, few attempts have been made to develop comprehensive clinical procedures based on the operant manipulation of stuttering. The present research examined the efficacy of self-initiated response-contingent time-out from speaking in two exeperiments involving a single subject. Multiple baseline designs were used in which the subject's speech was monitored in a variety of laboratory and community settings. In Experiment 1, the time-out procedure produced reliable reductions in disfluency across all observational settings. Experiment 2 combined a response-cost contingency with time-out in an attempt to increase the reliability with which the subject timed himself out, and to increase further the effectiveness of the procedure. Increases in reliability were produced, and the associated improvements in fluency were maintained at 6- and 12-months' follow-up.     

Self-control in male and female rats

Eight male and 8 female Wistar rats were exposed to a discrete-trial procedure in which they chose between the presentation of a small (one pellet) or a large (three pellets) reinforcer. The delay to the small and large reinforcer was 6.0 s in the first condition of Experiment 1. Subjects consistently chose the large reinforcer. When the delay to the small reinforcer was decreased to 0.1 s in the next experimental condition, all subjects continued to choose the large 6.0-s delayed reinforcer. When the contingencies correlated with the two levers were reversed in the next experimental condition, the majority of subjects (5 males and 6 females) still chose the large delayed reinforcer over the small immediately presented reinforcer. The delay to the small reinforcer was maintained at 6.0 s, but the delay to the large reinforcer was varied among 9.0, 15.0, 24.0, and 36.0 s in Experiment 2, in which 4 males and 4 females participated. Most subjects consistently chose the large increasingly delayed reinforcer, although choice for the small 6.0-s delayed reinforcer developed in some females when the large reinforcer was delayed for 24.0 or 36.0 s. These choice patterns were not predicted from a literal application of a model that says choice should favor the alternative correlated with the higher (amount/delay) ratio.     

Self-control: teaching tolerance for delay in impulsive children.

We investigated a procedure to increase the selection of larger, more delayed reinforcers (i.e., more advantageous in the long run) over smaller immediate reinforcers, in an effort to increase a key aspect of self-control in children. Six preschoolers, including one comparison subject, identified by their teachers as impulsive, were preassessed and found consistently to select smaller immediate reinforcers over larger, more delayed ones. The teaching procedure consisted of gradually increasing the durations of the delay interval over many sessions. The follow-up assessments showed that 5 of these children increased the proportion of their choices of the delayed reinforcers. Before training, indifference points ranged from 1.7 to 51.7 s; following treatment, points rose to a range of 37.5 to at least 90 s, with 3 children preferring the larger reinforcer at all delay intervals tested. The results demonstrated the feasibility of teaching young children to make choices more advantageous to them in the long run.     

A comparison of delays and ratio requirements in self-control choice.

In a discrete-trial procedure, pigeons could choose between 2-s and 6-s access to grain by making a single key peck. In Phase 1, the pigeons obtained both reinforcers by responding on fixed-ratio schedules. In Phase 2, they received both reinforcers after simple delays, arranged by fixed-time schedules, during which no responses were required. In Phase 3, the 2-s reinforcer was available through a fixed-time schedule and the 6-s reinforcer was available through a fixed-ratio schedule. In all conditions, the size of the delay or ratio leading to the 6-s reinforcer was systematically increased or decreased several times each session, permitting estimation of an "indifference point," the schedule size at which a subject chose each alternative equally often. By varying the size of the schedule for the 2-s reinforcer across conditions, several such indifference points were obtained from both fixed-time conditions and fixed-ratio conditions. The resulting "indifference curves" from fixed-time conditions and from fixed-ratio conditions were similar in shape, and they suggested that a hyperbolic equation describes the relation between ratio size and reinforcement value as well as the relation between reinforcer delay and its reinforcement value. The results from Phase 3 showed that subjects chose fixed-time schedules over fixed-ratio schedules that generated the same average times between a choice response and reinforcement.     

SELF-CONTROL TRAINING IN THE CLASSROOM: A REVIEW AND CRITIQUE

Self-control training in classroom settings is becoming widespread. Establishing effective self- rather than externally controlled behavior modification programs in schools would enable children to control their own academic and social behavior, while enabling teachers to devote more time to teaching. The following components of self-control are reviewed in the present article: self-recording, self-evaluation, self-determination of contingencies, and self-instruction. Self-control strategies designed for the maintenance of appropriate classroom behavior, and issues associated with self-control training, such as the reliability of self-observation, response maintenance, generalization, and the role of external control, are examined. Finally, suggestions for maximizing the potential effectiveness of self-control training in the classroom (e.g., teaching self-observational procedures, teaching students to provide themselves with instructions and praise), as well as future areas for experimental investigation (e.g., social changes that may be associated with self-control procedures), are presented.     

Real World Justice

Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to lifelong severe poverty with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. We citizens of the rich countries are conditioned to think of this problem as an occasion for assistance. Thanks in part to the rationalizations dispensed by our economists, most of us do not realize how deeply we are implicated, through the new global economic order our states have imposed, in this ongoing catastrophe. My sketch of how we are so implicated follows the argument of my book, World Poverty and Human Rights, but takes the form of a response to the books critics.