A Comparison of Cost and Reward Procedures With Interdependent Group Contingencies

Abstract

Disruptive behavior is considered the most common concern among general education teachers. Due to the nature of disruptive behavior amongst multiple students in the classroom, it ha been suggested that the most reasonable way of handling disruptive classroom behavior is through group contingencies while utilizing token economies. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of token economies within a general education classroom. Two elementary school teachers and their students participated. Conditions included baseline, response cost, and gain. During response cost conditions, tokens were removed contingent on disruptive behavior. During gain conditions, tokens were provided contingent on the absence of disruptive behavior. Results indicate that both procedures are effective to reduce the overall number of students disrupting and neither condition completely suppressed disruptive behavior. Implications are that both response cost and gain procedures are an efficient procedure to reduce the overall number of students disrupting in the general education classroom.

Stimulus presentation versus stimulus removal in the Good Behavior Game

“…treatment (Lee et al, 2017;McGoey & DuPaul, 2000). The present study extends the research on the effectiveness of variations of the GBG in general education classrooms in three important ways.…”

“…Therefore, the stimuli may have confounded the preference results and should be viewed with caution. We considered using arbitrary stimuli, but previous research indicated potential problems with student differentiation between conditions when the same stimuli were used (e.g., stars, Lee et al, 2017); therefore, the name of the games and stimuli were familiar and distinct to increase the likelihood that students would differentiate the game in effect.…”

“…Response cost, a negative punishment procedure, consists of the removal of a conditioned reinforcer contingent on undesired behavior (Kazdin, ; Miltenberger, ). In general, response cost procedures produce similar reductions in aggression (e.g., Conyers et al, ) and disruption (e.g., Donaldson et al, ; Iwata & Bailey, ; Lee et al, ; Tanol et al, ), and similar increases in on‐task behavior (e.g., Hirst et al, ) as reinforcement‐only procedures. For example, Tanol et al () compared positive reinforcement (tokens earned) and response cost (tokens lost) variations of the GBG on rule following and rule violations with six kindergarten students across two classrooms.…”

“…The GBG response cost version also included a praise component making it difficult to separate the effects of token removal and delivery of praise. Lee et al (2017) conducted a similar comparison of reward versus response cost in a group contingency while maintaining the same schedule of consequences across game variations. In this study, the experimenters used a momentary time sample to measure disruption.…”

“…Lee et al () conducted a similar comparison of reward versus response cost in a group contingency while maintaining the same schedule of consequences across game variations. In this study, the experimenters used a momentary time sample to measure disruption.…”