Token reinforcement procedures were designed to modify the behavior of "pre-delinquent" boys residing in a community-based, home-style rehabilitation setting. Points (the tokens) were redeemable for various privileges such as visiting their families, watching TV, and riding bicycles. Points were given by the house-parents contingent upon specified appropriate behavior and taken away for specified inappropriate behavior. The frequencies of aggressive statements and poor grammar decreased while tidiness, punctuality, and amount of homework completed increased. It was concluded that a token reinforcement procedure, entirely dependent upon back-up reinforcers naturally available in a home-style treatment setting, could contribute to an effective and economical rehabilitation program for pre-delinquents.
The "pre-delinquent" behaviors of six boys at Achievement Place, a community based family style behavior modification center for delinquents, were modified using token (points) reinforcement procedures. In Exp. I, point losses contingent on each minute late were effective in producing promptness at the evening meal. During the reversal phase, threats (which were not backed up with point losses) to reinstate the point consequences initially improved promptness but the last two of five threats were ineffective. In Exp. II, point consequences effectively maintained the boys' room-cleaning behavior and, during a fading condition where the percentage of days when the contingency occurred was decreased, the point consequences remained effective for over six months, even when they were delivered on only 8% of the days. Experiment III showed that the boys saved considerable amounts of money when point consequences were available for deposits but saved little money when no points were available. Also, when points were given only for deposits that occurred on specific days the boys deposited their money almost exclusively on those days. In Exp. IV, point consequences contingent on the number of correct answers on a news quiz produced the greatest increase in the percentage of boys who watched the news and, to a lesser extent, increased the percentage of correct answers for the boys who watched the news. The results indicate that "pre-delinquent" behaviors are amenable to modification procedures and that a token reinforcement system provides a practical means of modifying these behaviors.
Three reliably measured components of conversation-questioning, providing positive feedback, and proportion of time spent talking-were identified and validated as to their social importance. The social validity of the three conversational behaviors was established with five female university students and five female junior-high students. Each was videotaped in conversations with previously unknown adults. The conversational ability of each girl was evaluated by a group of 13 adult judges who viewed each tape and rated each conversant "poor" to "excellent" on a seven-point rating scale. The average ratings of the girls correlated at r = 0.85 with the specified behavioral measures. These procedures were replicated with additional subjects and judges and yielded a correlation of r = 0.84. The high correlations between ratings and the objective measures suggested that the specified conversational behaviors were socially important aspects of conversational ability. Employing a multiple-baseline design across the behaviors of asking questions and providing positive feedback, an attempt was made to train four girls who used these behaviors minimally to engage in the behaviors in conversations with adults. Adult judges were again employed to rate randomly selected samples of the girls' skills in pre-and posttraining conversations. The average ratings of the girls before training were lower than both the university girls and the junior high-school girls. After training, the girls' conversational abilities were rated substantially higher than those of their junior high-school peers. These rating data validated the benefits of the training and the social importance of the behavioral components of questions and feedback in conversation. The authors suggest that it may be necessary for traditional behavior analysis measurement systems to be supplemented by social-validation procedures in order to establish the relationship between "objectively" measured behaviors and complex classes of behavior of interest to society.
In Exp. I, five pre-delinquents from Achievement Place attended a special summer school math class where study behavior and rule violations were measured daily for each boy. The boys were required to take a "report card" for the teacher to mark. The teacher simply marked yes or no whether a boy had "studied the whole period" and "obeyed the class rules." All yeses earned privileges in the home that day but a no lost all the privileges. Using a reversal design, it was shown that privileges dispensed remotely could significantly improve classroom performance. In Exp. II and III, home-based reinforcement was also shown to be effective in improving the study behavior of two youths in public school classrooms. In addition, data from Exp. III suggest that the daily feedback and reinforcement may be faded without much loss in study behavior. Home-based reinforcement was demonstrated to be a very effective and practical classroom behavior modification technique.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.