TEACHING ELEMENTARY STUDENTS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES TO RECRUIT TEACHER ATTENTION IN A GENERAL EDUCATION CLASSROOM: EFFECTS ON TEACHER PRAISE AND ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVITY

Four fourth graders with developmental disabilities were trained to recruit teacher attention while they worked on spelling assignments in a general education classroom. The students were taught to show their work to the teacher two to three times per session and to make statements such as, “How am I doing?” or “Look, I'm all finished!” Training was conducted in the special education classroom and consisted of modeling, role playing, error correction, and praise. A multiple baseline across students design showed that recruitment training increased (a) the frequency of students' recruiting, (b) the frequency of teacher praise received by the students, (c) the percentage of worksheet items completed, and (d) the accuracy with which the students completed the spelling assignments.     

An investigation of the validity of the SPSI and SPSI-R in differentiating high-suicidal from depressed,low-suicidal college students

The present study examined the validity of the Social Problem-Solving Inventory (SPSI) and SPSI—Revised in differentiating 65 high-suicidal from 63 depressed, low-suicidal college students. Results from multivariate analyses indicated overall differences in problem-solving between these two groups as measured by the SPSI but not by the SPSI-R. Further examination of these differences revealed the high-suicidal group was different in problem-solving orientation, rather than problem-solving skills, compared to the depressed, low-suicidal group. However, when depression was statistically controlled in hierarchical regression analyses, none of the problem-solving measures predicted group membership. The superiority of the SPSI to the SPSI-R in differentiating these two groups appears to be accounted for by the elimination of 28 items in the revised version, many of which measure orientation to problem-solving. Also explored was the possibility that objective measures of problem-solving provide a better prediction of adjustment than do self-report measures.     

Effects of differential reinforcement on the behavior and self-esteem of children with emotional and behavioral disorders

Students in a residential special school for children with emotional and behavioral disorders participated in a study designed to reduce their levels of inappropriate behavior. The residential care staff rated the students' behavioral problems and their class teachers rated their overt self-esteem pre and post intervention. In addition, the students completed self-ratings of their self-esteem. The students were divided into two groups, experimental and control. A multiple baseline across behaviors design was used to assess behavioral changes in the experimental group. Both groups received tangible rewards to the same level but only the experimental group received them contingent upon behaving appropriately. Results showed that the experimental group students made substantial reductions in their levels of inappropriate behavior, which were maintained at a three-month followup. Also, ratings of their behavioral problems by residential child care staff suggested that this improvement in behavior had generalized beyond the classroom to the residential setting. However, no significant differences were found between the pre- and post-intervention ratings of their self-esteem or teacher ratings of their overt self-esteem.     

高中生感知教师支持与学习投入的关系:学业自我效能感和成就目标定向的链式中介作用

采用感知教师支持、学习投入、学业自我效能感和成就目标定向问卷对498名高中生进行问卷调查,探讨感知教师支持对学习投入的影响,以及学业自我效能感和成就目标定向的链式中介效应。结果显示：（1）感知教师支持能通过学业自我效能感间接预测高中生学习投入,感知教师支持可以通过掌握趋近、表现趋近、表现回避间接预测高中生学习投入;（2）学业自我效能感→掌握趋近、学业自我效能感→表现趋近、学业自我效能感→表现回避三者分别在感知教师支持与学习投入之间起链式中介作用,学业自我效能感→掌握回避的中介效应则不显著。上述结果表明,感知教师支持不仅能分别通过学业自我效能感、掌握趋近、表现趋近、表现回避预测高中生学习投入,还能通过学业自我效能感和成就目标定向的链式中介作用间接预测高中生学习投入。     

TRAINING PRESCHOOL CHILDREN TO RECRUIT NATURAL COMMUNITIES OF REINFORCEMENT1

Four normal and four deviant children aged four-to-six years were taught to judge the quality of their academic work in a preschool classroom, and to prompt or cue their teachers to comment about the quality of that work. When these skills did not generalize spontaneously to other teachers in concurrent natural situations, generalized responding was taught by the experimenter, in multiple-baseline design across subjects. This generalization programming enabled the children to contact a sometimes dormant, but readily available natural community of teacher praise and reinforcement, i.e., to recruit an increase in cued praise and schedules of praise for their good work. These behaviors may be important to young children who find themselves bereft of attention in classrooms.     

SEVERE CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS: TEACHERS OR COUNSELLORS

This experiment was designed to determine the relative effectiveness of teacher and counselling approaches in the reduction of disruptive or inappropriate classroom behavior. Inappropriate classroom behavior frequencies of 12 academically low achieving, seventh-grade, black male students, with a reported high rate of inappropriate classroom behavior, were recorded. Three groups, with nearly equal mean inappropriate behaviors, were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: behavioral counselling, client-centered counselling, or no counselling. Each counselling group received fifteen 30-minute counselling sessions, at a rate of two to three times a week. In addition to counselling, all students subsequently received teacher approval within the classroom. Results indicated that the teacher was able to reduce inappropriate behavior more than any counselling group. There were also indications that behavioral counselling, but not client-centered counselling, was moderately helpful in reducing inappropriate classroom behavior.     

Local contrast and maintained generalization.

Pigeons received variable-interval reinforcement for key pecking during presentations of horizontal and vertical line-orientation stimuli, while pecks during five intermediate orientations were extinguished. Lowest peck rates were observed during presentations of negative stimuli adjacent to the positive orientations while peck rate during 45 degrees (the intermediate negative orientation) was relatively high, i.e., there were negative contrast shoulders. When peck rates were manipulated in the positive orientations, peck rate in neithboring orientations changed in the opposite direction. Contrast shoulders faded after prolonged training. A second type of contrast, local contrast, was correlated with similarity of preceding stimulus and different average peck rates during different stages of the discrimination process. The data suggest that sequential local contrast accompanying the formation of a discrimination contributes to the form of generalization gradients. Blough's model of stimulus control predicts the changes in gradient form described here, but may not accurately depict the underlying process responsible for gradient form.     

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.     

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.     

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN TEACHER GUIDANCE AND CONTINGENT ACCESS TO PLAY IN DEVELOPING PREACADEMIC SKILLS OF DEVIANT PRESCHOOL CHILDREN1

Token-mediated access to play and snacks was made contingent on completion of academic tasks in the Baseline Experiment. This contingency produced stable completion rates that were subsequently doubled, and then tripled, for four deviant children in a special preschool. A reversal design demonstrated that the contingency was functional in maintaining the children's rates of task completion. The Guidance Experiment examined the role of a social event, teacher guidance, in the acquisition of task-completion skills, in a multiple-baseline-across-tasks design (with reversals). The analysis demonstrated that teacher guidance was an important supplement to the token-mediated contingency in establishing significant increases in task completions for a second group of three deviant children in the special class. The importance of teacher guidance was related to the difficulty level of the children's tasks.