Customer service for bank tellers was defined in terms of 11 verbal behavior categories. An audio-recording system was used to track the occurrence of behaviors in these categories for six retail banking tellers. Three behavior management interventions (task clarification, performance feedback, and social praise), applied in sequence, were designed to improve overall teller performance with regard to the behavioral categories targeted. Clarification was accomplished by providing clear delineation of the various target categories, with specific examples of the behaviors in each. Feedback entailed presentation of ongoing verbal and visual information regarding teller performance. Praise consisted of verbal recognition of teller performance by branch managers. Results showed that clarification effects emerged quickly, producing an overall increase in desired behaviors of 12% over baseline. Feedback and praise effects occurred more gradually, resulting in overall increases of 6% and 7%, respectively. A suspension of all procedures led to a decline in overall performance, whereas reinstatement of feedback and praise was again accompanied by performance improvement. These findings extend the generality of behavior management applications and help to distinguish between possible antecedent and consequent effects of performance feedback.
Rat and pigeon data that had been collected in three separate laboratories were examined with reference to the effects on fixed-ratio behavior of either delaying the delivery of a scheduled reinforcer and/or varying the size of the ratio requirement. All such effects were reflected as changes in the duration of the interval (the preratio pause) that intervened between delivery of a reinforcer and commencement of responding for the next one. Although there was considerable variability in the absolute values obtained for the functions, in all cases , and for each individual subject, the relationship between these independent variables and durations of the preratio pause was well described by a power function . This finding is consonant with a previously offered suggestion that power functions provide a useful measurement of response strength for latency-type data.Some time ago, Ferster and Skinner (1957) observed that fixed-ratio (FR) schedules of reinforcement produce a pattern of responding typified by a pause immediately after delivery of a reinforcer, followed by a steady rate of responding until the next reinforcer. This pattern is found in the behavior of a wide number of species working under FR schedules (Inman & Cheney, 1974 ;Laursen, 1972;Powell & Curley, 1976 ;Todd & Cogan, 1978). Subsequent research has confirmed that the pause (usually termed the preratio pause) is remarkably sensitive to a host of independent variables, whereas the responding after it is not (e.g., Felton & Lyon, 1966; Meunier & Starratt, 1979;Morgan, 1972 ;Powell, 1969;Sidman & Stebbins, 1959).The purpose of the present work is to suggest a general quantitative rule that seems to serve as a good description of these relationships. Data from one unpublished and two previously published experiments were reanalyzed for this purpose. Only salient methodological details from the previously published experiments are restated in this article. METHODCrossman, Heaps, Nunes, and Alferink (1974 , Experiment 1) reinforced pigeons with 3-sec access to Purina Racing Pigeon Checkers according to a two-ply multiple schedule. In the first component, the one of interest to this report, responding according to FR schedules of 25, 50, 100, 200, 300 , 25, and 50 was examined in a reversal design. In the other component, the first response after a reinforcer initiated a time-out, and the first response after termination of time-out was reinforced. BothThis research was supported in part by a grant from the Ball State University Office of Research. Thanks are due to Ed Crossman for generously supplying raw data and to Robert E. HiII, Jr. for statistical help . Reprints may be obtained from Gary F . Meunier, Department of Psychological Science, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306. birds were experimentally naive at the beginning of the study . Components of the schedule alternated randomly, and an attempt was made to equate average interreinforcement intervals in the two.Topping , Johnson, and McGlynn (1973), on the other hand , studied eight ex...
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