The good behavior game (GBG) is a classwide group contingency that involves dividing the class into two teams, creating simple rules, and arranging contingencies for breaking or following those rules. Five kindergarten teachers and classrooms participated in this evaluation of the GBG. Disruptive behavior markedly decreased in all five classrooms as a result of the intervention. This study extends the GBG literature by systematically replicating the effects of the GBG with the youngest group of students to date.

A common recommendation for implementing time-out procedures is to include a release contingency such that the individual is not allowed to leave time-out until no problem behavior has occurred for a specific amount of time (e.g, 30 s). We compared a fixed-duration time-out procedure to a release contingency time-out procedure with 4 young children (3- and 4-year-olds) using a reversal and multielement design. Results demonstrated that both time-out procedures were effective at reducing problem behavior outside time-out, problem behavior occurred in time-out during both procedures, and problem behavior in time-out was not predictive of problem behavior outside time-out.

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The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a classwide group contingency that has proven effective at reducing disruptive classroom behavior across elementary and secondary grade levels (Flower, McKenna, Bunuan, Muething, & Vega, 2014). The vast majority of GBG research has reported the effects at the classwide level. There have been relatively few evaluations of the effects of the GBG on individual student behavior. The current study examined the effects of the GBG at the individual student level for 12 participants nominated as most disruptive by their teachers across 2 kindergarten classes and 1 first-grade class. The majority of participants exhibited consistently less disruptive behavior during the GBG compared to baseline (BL). One participant's disruptive behavior persisted throughout all phases. These findings suggest that the GBG may prevent teachers from creating unnecessary individualized interventions for some students and may also help identify students who require individualized interventions.

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a group contingency that reduces disruption and increases engagement in various contexts. In recent years, researchers have extended the GBG in at least 3 ways: (a) demonstrating its efficacy with novel populations, settings, and behaviors, (b) examining procedural variations that improve contextual fit, and (c) using more comprehensive data collection methods to explore the behavior of individual students and indirect effects. The purpose of the current review is to summarize recent advances, discuss implications of recent studies and potential mechanisms for the general efficacy of the GBG, and suggest future directions.