An Evaluation of Preference for Mode of Instruction Following Variations in Response Effort

The current study evaluated preference for mode of instruction (i.e., visual or vocal) for four children diagnosed with a language-based learning disability. Each participant was an elementary student who was initially referred to a neuropsychology clinic specializing in learning disabilities. As a part of the evaluation, measures of each participant’s academic skills were collected. Following the diagnostic evaluation, each participant was referred to a behavioral psychologist to participate in this two-experiment study. In Experiment 1, preference for mode of instruction was evaluated within a concurrent schedules design across increasing task difficulty. In Experiment 2, changes in preference for mode of instruction following increases in task amount were evaluated via a progressive ratio arrangement within a concurrent schedules design. Results from both experiments showed that preference for mode of instruction can change under high-effort conditions (i.e., task difficulty and task amount).