No abstract

Effects of the contingency for submission of homework assignments on the probability of assignment submission and on quiz grades were assessed in an undergraduate psychology course. Under an alternating treatments design, each student was assigned to a points condition for 5 of 10 quiz-related homework assignments corresponding to textbook chapters. Points were available for homework submission under this condition; points were not available under the no-points condition. The group-mean percentage of homework assignments submitted and quiz grades were higher for all chapters under the points condition than in the no-points condition. These findings, which were replicated in Experiment 2, demonstrate that homework submission was not maintained when the only consequences were instructor-provided feedback and expectation of improved quiz performance.

The current study examined instructors' discrete-trial teaching responses after a performance-based training procedure in which instructors were required to demonstrate criterion-level performance on written and oral quizzes and on performance demonstrations. Twelve discrete-trial teaching responses were labeled and operationally defined. Post-training measures of the target responses were obtained during home-based early intervention teaching sessions with young children with autism. The director provided discrete-trial performance feedback to the instructor after each session. Mean accuracy of performance for the instructors was 92% or above across 10 sessions. These data were contrasted with the substantially lower levels of accuracy from normative data of instructors conducting sessions in a comparable setting. These data suggest the importance of requiring criterion-level performance during training. keywords: autism; discrete-trial teaching; early intensive behavioral intervention; staff training. The purpose of the current study was to examine instructors' discrete-trial teaching performance with young children with autism after a training procedure that included a stringent accuracy criterion was implemented. Training to criterion is not typically established in the staff training literature (Matson, 1990). Discrete-trial teaching is an instructional method that incorporates the principles of applied behavior analysis by breaking down complex tasks into small units and presenting them in a simplified, repeated manner to facilitate learning (