Special Education ETDs

Publication Date

10-8-1976

Abstract

Thirty-six upper elementary aged school children, 18 of whom attended classes for Behaviorally Disordered (BD) children and 18 of whom were based in Regular Classes, were divided into two groups of nine students each for the purpose of comparing the effects of Teacher-Applied Reinforcement and Pupil-Applied Reinforcement on academic responding. Following a Pretest of basic addition, which allowed the Regular Class students to be matched to the BD students on level of problem difficulty, all subjects underwent a nine-day baseline period. At every session during Baseline 1, each subject attempted to solve twenty addition problems at an individualized level of difficulty determined by his Pretest performance in addition skills. All work on the problems was stopped after five minutes, and each subject was given the opportunity to score his own work and plot his daily progress on two separate bar graphs; one indicating number correct, and the other indicating the amount of time taken to complete the problems. These graphs were maintained throughout all three phases of the experiment. Following Baseline 1, an Intervention phase, lasting seven days, was introduced. During Intervention, children in the Teacher-Applied Reinforcement condition were given from 0-5 checkmarks each day by the teacher for increasing their number of problems correct with each day, maintaining a "high" number of problems correct, and reducing the amount of time taken to complete the problems. Children in the Pupil-Applied Reinforcement condition could earn from 0-5 checkmarks according to the same contingencies listed for the Teacher-Applied group, with the exception that the students, themselves, awarded their own checkmarks. All subjects could choose to either redeem their checkmarks daily or to save them for later redemption for inexpensive tangible back-up reinforcers. In Baseline 2, checkmarks and back-up reinforcers were withdrawn. A Postexperimental Inquiry was held following the completion of Baseline 2 for the purpose of gaining information about characteristics of the procedures, themselves, which might have interfered with the independent variables. The results indicated that Behavior Disordered children obtain higher rates with Pupil-Applied Reinforcement than with Teacher-Applied Reinforcement, while Regular Class children perform equally under both types of reinforcement conditions. It is possible that the BD children in the Teacher-Applied Reinforcement condition were required to perform at a level inappropriate to the amount of reinforcement they were given, causing their rates to decline during Intervention. Differential resistance to extinction was not found among the groups. All groups were found to inflate their scores during reinforcement conditions. Since students reported their own scores without teacher supervision, the contingencies may have been more effective in increasing the reporting of inflated scores than in improving actual performances.

Sponsors

The University of New Mexico Graduate Student Association

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Special Education

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Special Education

First Committee Member (Chair)

Roger Lee Kroth

Second Committee Member

Joseph Anthony Parsons

Third Committee Member

Gary Wayne Adamson

Fourth Committee Member

Richard Lane McDowell

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