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Contingency management systems in university courses have sometimes assigned the role of reinforcing stimulus to lectures and demonstrations. Attending a lecture was made contingent upon having previously finished certain course assignments. The present paper investigated some variables that control student attendance at lectures. Attendance remained high throughout each course at those class meetings where quizzes contributing to course grades were given or where impending quizzes were discussed. Attendance at lectures over the reading assignments or over material unrelated to course quizzes rapidly declined. When students were given course credit for attending these lectures, or when the lectures included information for future quizzes, attendance increased. When attending these lectures was made contingent upon having completed certain assignments the prior week, no increase in assignment completion was noted and the attendance at the lectures decreased even further. All lectures were given during one class meeting each week. Attendance at the other class meetings during the week remained stable.Class contingency management systems have been concerned with finding accessible reinforcing stimuli indigenous to the classroom itself (Addison and Homme, 1966;Bijou, 1970;Meacham and Wiesen, 1969; Osbourne, 1969;Schmidt and Ulrich, 1969). Teacher attention, recess, and games are examples of reinforcers at the disposal of the elementary school teacher. Similar reinforcing events would likewise be useful to university instructors. This paper reports an experimental analysis of some of the reinforcing properties associated with classroom lectures.Some contingency management systems in university courses have assigned the role of reinforcing stimulus to lectures and demonstrations (McMichael and Corey, 1969). One author (Keller, 1968) gave seven lectures at intervals during the term. Only students who had completed a specified number of units of course 'The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Washington State University Improvement in Instruction Fund. Reprints may be obtained from Kenneth E. Lloyd, Department of Psychology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99163.work were permitted to attend the lectures. There were no penalties for not attending and no additional reinforcers were promised for attending these lectures. Keller reported that " . each (lecture was) attended by perhaps half of the students entitled to be there." (Keller, 1968, p. 83).The dependent variable in the present studies was attendance at class meetings. The independent variables were contingencies for attending. Three different contingencies were imposed in three different courses. First, students were sometimes given course credit for attending class. Second, students were sometimes given information relevant to a subsequent quiz during class meetings. Third, admission to a class meeting was made contingent upon having completed certain assignments. METHODThe courses were organized on a point system similar...

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