A Response-cost procedure for reduction of impulsive behavior of academically handicapped children

To test the hypothesis that impulsive problem-solving behavior may be due to a child's low concern about response accuracy on the Matching Familiar Figures Test, a procedure was devised which involved punishment of incorrect responses by withdrawal of tokens given before each trial. This Response-cost procedure and the Standard procedure were given in counterbalanced sequence to two groups of 15 children with a mean chronological age of 13.9 and a mean IQ of 71 who were attending special classes because of academic difficulty. Subjects showed significantly longer latency to first response under the Response-cost procedure and also made significantly fewer errors under this procedure when it was the second one administered. When the Response-cost procedure was given first, the subjects tended to carry over their relatively low error rates to the subsequent trials under the standard procedure.Appreciation is expressed to Dorothy Arnold, Frank Scott, and the participating pupils from Mary Potter School in Oxford, North Carolina. Funds for computer processing were provided by the Center for Research on Exceptional Children, School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The project was supported in part by U.S. Public Health Service, Maternal and Child Health Service Project No. 916 and by Grant HD-03110 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.