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.     

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.     

SELF-RECORDING IN TRAINING GIRLS TO INCREASE WORK AND EVOKE STAFF PRAISE IN AN INSTITUTION FOR OFFENDERS1

Self-recording procedures were used by four adolescent girls to increase work and comments (cues) that evoked staff praise during vocational training sessions in a maximum-security institution for offenders. The girls were selected on the basis of their not responding to a staff-directed token program. The self-recording procedures were directed by a therapist who saw the girls outside the vocational training sessions. According to a multiple-baseline design, self-recording of work was introduced sequentially to each of the two or three settings the girls attended each day. A few days after work had increased, self-recording of cues was introduced. Tokens were delivered by the therapist for work and cues recorded by the girls. Work and cues increased following self-recording for three of the girls and increased cues evoked higher rates of staff praise. Girl and staff behaviors were maintained during short follow-up periods when tokens were not given for the girls' records. The procedures failed to effect desirable changes with a fourth girl's work, and self-recording of work was terminated without introducing cueing.     

Effects of neutral and enthusiastic praise on the rate of discrimination acquisition

Previous research has shown that praise is an effective reinforcer; however, few researchers have evaluated whether qualitative differences in praise affect responding. The purpose of the current study was to compare the effects of neutral, enthusiastic, and no praise on the rate of matching‐to‐sample acquisition during discrete‐trial training with adults diagnosed with autism and an intellectual disability. In addition, we evaluated preference for neutral, enthusiastic, and no praise. All three participants acquired responses slightly faster during the enthusiastic praise condition. Preference assessment results showed that one participant preferred enthusiastic praise, whereas the two other participants showed indiscriminate selections.     

The alluringness of desire

In her book, Unprincipled Virtue, Nomy Arpaly is suspicious of reflective endorsement or deliberative rationality views of agency, those which tie the possibility of responsibility and moral blame to the conscious exercise of deliberation and reflection, and which require as a condition of blame- or praise- worthiness an agent's explicit commitment to ethical principles. I am in sympathy with her attack on standard autonomy theories, but argue that she confuses the phenomenon of unknowing and unreflective responsiveness to the right-making features of an action with incomplete and merely provisional commitment to principles and maxims of action, and argue that she is often arguing against straw men. I also argue that she has misinterpreted the fascinating literary examples she adduces to make her case.     

Effects of an audio cueing system on the rate of teacher praise

The effects of automated cueing on teacher praise rate was investigated in one special, one fourth-, and one seventh-grade classroom. After establishing baseline praise rates in each of the three classrooms, two methods for increasing teacher praise rate were introduced according to a multiple-baseline design. During the first phase, two teachers were instructed to count and graph their praise rate during each session. All teachers received auditory cues to prompt praising during another phase. In all cases, introduction of cues markedly increased teacher praise rates, but self-recording was relatively ineffective. An analysis of teacher-praise distributions showed that cues closely controlled teacher praise for two of the three teachers.     

Correspondence between saying and doing: teaching children to share and praise

Five small groups of preschool children were taught to share and praise by the modelling of these behaviors and reinforcement of their reports of sharing and praising. Experiment I demonstrated that modelling and reinforcement of any (true or untrue) reports of sharing, and then of praising, promptly increased reports of the corresponding behaviors. Modelling and reinforcement for true reports of each behavior increased both reporting and actual behavior. Experiment II showed that both reported and actual sharing and praising may be increased by modelling and reinforcement for true reports of the target behavior, without previous reinforcement for any (true or untrue) reports of those behaviors. Sharing, but not praising, generalized to a second setting. Experiment III replicated the results of Experiment II for sharing and praising, and demonstrated similar success in increasing a third behavior, specific praising. In general, these experiments show that developing correspondence between children's reports of behavior and actual behavior may be an efficient means of increasing prosocial responses.