Techniques of behavior modification were employed with two second-grade Negro girls in a demonstration school for culturally deprived children to increase the girls' appropriate classroom behaviors. A classification system that provided for continuous categorization of behavior was used to code the children's behavior in two classroom situations. Data were also taken on the type, duration, and frequency of the teachers' verbal interactions. The study included four conditions: Baseline, Modification I, Postmodification, and Modification II. The treatment variable was positive social reinforcement-attention and approval contingent upon desirable classroom behaviors-which was presented, withheld, or withdrawn (timeout from social reinforcement). Withholding of social reinforcement was contingent upon inappropriate attention-getting behaviors. Timeout from social reinforcement was contingent upon behaviors classified as aggressive and resistive. After 25 days of Modification I, desirable behavior increased markedly for each girl. The teachers were then asked to return to their Baseline level of performance. The resultant behaviors demonstrated that for one girl, behavior was still primarily under the control of the treatment contingencies. For the second child, many desirable behaviors that had increased in frequency during Modification I remained high, but inappropriate behaviors increased. When treatment was reinstated, the amount of time spent in desirable behaviors increased and remained high for both girls. Three checks during the three months following data collection showed that these behaviors continued to remain high.Within a classroom setting, disruptive behaviors can prevent a child from making maximum use of school time. Culturally deprived children are already at an academic disadvantage when they begin school, and when these children demonstrate aggressive, antisocial, or resistive behaviors, they become even further handicapped.In attempting to alter a child's classroom behaviors, it is not as pertinent to question the development of these behaviors as it is to recognize that the behaviors can be maintained by the existing environment.
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