This study investigated the Caught Being Good Game (CBGG), for use with an adolescent student population. The CBGG is a positive variation of the Good Behavior Game (GBG), a popular group contingency intervention in classroom management literature. In this positive version, teams of students receive points for engaging in desirable behavior, rather than marks for breaking class rules. Research on the CBGG has garnered empirical interest in recent years; however, there is little published research on the game with adolescent populations. This study investigated if visual feedback displayed on a scoreboard during the CBGG is a necessary part of the game. This was examined by implementing the game both with and without overt visual feedback, using an ABACABAC reversal design. Academically engaged behavior and disruptive behavior were monitored. The CBGG was effective in both formats, leading to increases in academically engaged behavior and decreases in disruptive behavior in the participating class group. This suggests that perhaps immediate visual feedback is not an essential component of the CBGG for adolescent, mainstream students. This may be a time-saving measure for teachers wishing to implement the game. Students and their teacher rated the game favorably on social validity measures.
We examined the effect of a teaching method on skill fluency and on-task endurance of a 9-year-old boy who had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. An academic task that occurred at low fluency during 10-min baseline sessions was taught to fluency. When responding was not yet fluent, brief reversals to baseline showed that the learner's rate of responding decreased and that he did not spend entire sessions on task. However, once a fluency goal had been reached, responding remained fluent and he remained on task in the third reversal condition.
With the increased interest in educational provision for children with autism there has been renewed vigour in establishing educational programmes that allow for greater teaching effectiveness. One educational innovation that strives to bring 'precision' to the teaching-monitoring process is Precision Teaching (PT). PT is a system of tactics and strategies that provides frequent assessment of student performance and related teaching effectiveness. The system is content free and offers professionals a set of tools that can complement existing teaching practice to enhance outcomes for children with autism. This paper offers an analysis of key components of PT and discusses the implications of PT for the programmes of children with autism.
The proposition that variable practice may be superior to constant practice even for consistent transfer situations was tested on a prototypical consistently performed skill, the basketball free throw. 94 participants were matched on free-throw shooting, then randomly assigned to one of four practice conditions, a Constant condition, i.e., at the free-throw line, and three Variable conditions. Under supervision participants practiced shooting free throws four days a week for three weeks. Three substantially different variable practice conditions produced significant improvement similar to that of constant practice on tests during each week of practice and on a delayed retention test. Consistent with the proposition, the most variable practice group performed as well as the other groups on the retention test despite lower practice performance.
Many prompting procedures exist for teaching skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability; however, direct comparisons between variations of prompt delay are rarely made. Here, we compared three variations of prompt delay (2-s or 5-s constant delay and 5-s progressive delay) alongside trial-and-error instruction. Four learners were taught a conditional discrimination task using a match-to-sample arrangement. Performances were compared using effectiveness and efficiency measures in an adapted alternating treatments design. A procedural modification, in the form of differential reinforcement, was applied to the prompt delay procedure for two of the four participants. With or without this procedural modification, results suggest progressive prompt delay may be effective and the most efficient in reducing learner errors during instruction.
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