A group of 12 children were enrolled in a preschool class. During the first experimental stage they participated in special events contingent on token earning. Tokens were acquired by engaging in a variety of study behaviors. After a level of study behavior was established under this contingency, the special events were provided noncontingently. Study behavior declined throughout the noncontingent stage. Reestablishing the original contingencies produced an immediate return to the initial level of study behavior. Noncontingent special events reduced the amount of independent study, group participation, and cooperative study. The study behavior of each child was altered in the same direction, though differences in the magnitude of effects from child to child were observed. The objective of this research was to determine whether operant techniques may be applied to a group of individuals with effects similar to those expected when a single subject is under study. The specific behavior under analysis was the study behavior of a group of preschool children.The dependent variables were behaviors such as attending quietly to instructions, working independently or in cooperation with others as appropriate, remaining with and attending to assigned tasks, and reciting after assignments had been completed. Counter examples are behaviors such as disrupting others who are at work, changing an activity before its completion, and engaging in "escape" behaviors such as trips to the bathroom or drinking fountain, or gazing out the window. To the extent that the first constellation of behaviors is present and the second is absent, a student might be classified as industrious, highly motivated, or conscientious; in short, he has good study habits. METHOD Children and SettingThe subjects were 12 children enrolled in a summer session. Three other children were not considered in this report because they did not attend at least half of the sessions due to illness and family vacations. Four of the 12 children were 3-yr old, two were 4-yr old, five were 5-yr old, and one was 6-yr old. These 10 girls and two boys would be described as mid-55 1968, 1,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61] NUMBER I (SPRING, 1968)

Two experiments were conducted by the mothers of the children in a Head Start classroom. Both examined the effects of a switching task on the frequency with which children moved from one activity area of the classroom to another. The results indicated that the rate at which the children changed activities could be adjusted by varying the difficulty or magnitude of the switching task and that the task itself could be used to introduce academic subjects which would be poorly attended if initially presented in an activity area.

We examined the effects of teaching 5 typically developing elementary students to sound out their spelling words while writing them using the cover-copy-compare (CCC) method to practice spelling. Each student's posttest performance following practice with sounding out was compared to that student's posttest performance following practice with no sounding out. For every student, posttest accuracy was higher following practice with sounding out, indicating that it is an effective and easily implemented strategy to improve spelling instruction.

Recommendations for mathematics instruction frequently include the use of manipulatives as a critical component. There are few experimental analyses of teaching strategies involving the use of manipulatives (e.g., the number line). This investigation used a multiple baseline design across three groups of students to examine the effectiveness of an experimental procedure for improving low‐performing children's skills in solving missing addend arithmetic problems using the number line. To address concerns about inadequate time for instruction and insufficient practice in most mathematics instruction, trained peer tutors implemented the procedure. The results suggest that student performance improved when trained tutors taught the students number line procedures and gave them feedback on accuracy. Further, social validation data indicate that the students, their tutors, and their classroom teachers liked the procedures.

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