A Self‐instructional Package for Increasing Attending Behavior in Educable Mentally Retarded Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a self-instructional package that would aid highly distractible retarded children in increasing their attending behavior in a training and two generalization (a one-to-one and a classroom) situations. Three untrained subjects were monitored for general comparison and social validation purposes. One of these control subjects was distractible and the other two (criterion comparison) were evaluated as not having attentional problems. A multiple baseline design was employed in which training was sequentially introduced across subjects. During training, the experimental subjects were taught through self-instruction to focus their attention and to cope with two tasks, math and printing. After learning the self-instructions the subjects were systematically and sequentially exposed to photo-slides of distracting situations, to audio-distractors composed of noisy lunchroom verbal peer interactions, and to in vivo distractors provided by kindergarten children playing with wooden blocks in the training setting. The entire training procedure was handled in a game-like context to maintain subject interest and to facilitate generalization. The results suggested that the training package produced direct and generalized changes in self-instructional behavior. In addition, a decrease in off-task behavior occurred during math, printing, and also during a phonics program in the one-to-one and classroom situations. However, reliable changes in academic task performance were not observed. Finally, no systematic changes on any of the dependent measures occurred for the three untrained subjects.DESCRIPTORS: self-instruction, attending behavior, academic behavior, generalization, retarded children Within educational settings, teachers recognize that students must sustain attention to school-related materials and activities if learning

Self‐instructional Training to Increase Independent Work Performance in Preschoolers

“…The performance differences and Josh, 2.3 may have been due to improved skill on the simward's pre-and ilar tasks following exposure to them in training l and 3, Cindy, (irrespective of the self-instructional compospectively. The Burgio et al (1980), who reported similar results. By keeping teacher attention equivalent across all conditions, the present research ruled out teacher attention as an explanation for the changes in on-task behavior.…”

“…Arnold and Forehand (1978) found generalized improvements following training on a classroom matching task, whereas Robin et al (1975) found no such effect on an untrained task similar to that used during self-instructional training. Teacher ratings of children's classroom behavior have shown improvement following training in some studies (Burgio, Whitman, & Johnson, 1980;Kendall & Finch, 1978) but not in other cases (Douglas et al, 1976;Meichenbaum & Goodman, 1971).…”

“…Similarly, Meichenbaum and Goodman (1971) problem-solving, they should become more efficient at completing assigned independent work. Second, the two prior studies that found an increase in on-task behavior (Bornstein & Quevillon, 1976) or decrease in off-task behavior (Burgio et al, 1980) following self-instructional training did not include teacher attention data to rule out the effect of this variable on the children's behavior. The present study controlled teacher attention in the classroom to assure it remained constant from day to day and could not be responsible for any observed changes in on-task levels.…”

Self‐instructional Training With Preschoolers: An Attempt to Replicate

“…Most other investigators who have used selfinstructional training to improve dassroom functioning of children with conduct disorders have found improved performance on the assessment tasks but variable changes in actual dassroom behavior and academic performance (Arnold & Forehand, 1978;Bryant & Budd, 1982;Burgio, Whitman & Johnson, 1980;Kendall & Finch, 1978).…”

Self‐instructional Training: A Commentary and State‐of‐the‐art

“…Although the empirical and clinical findings on self-instructional training have been reviewed in detail (Craighead, Craighead-Wilcoxon, & Meyers, 1978;Karoly, 1977;Kendall, 1977;Kendall & Finch, 1979;Meichenbaum, 1977), let us briefly examine just a sample of the data. The self-instructional paradigm has been demonstrated effective in establishing self-control over the disruptive behavior of hyperactive (Douglas, Parry, Marton, & Garson, 1976), aggressive (Camp, Blom, Hebert, & van Doorninck, 1977), retarded (Burgio, Whitman, & Johnson, 1980), and emotionally disturbed (Kendall & Finch, 1978) children. Further, it has been used to reduce cheating in kindergarten/first-grade children (Monahan & O'Leary, 1971), increase Porteus maze performance (Palkes, Stewart, & Freedman, 1972), and affect the "conceptual tempo" of emotionally disturbed (Finch, Wilkinson, Nelson, & Montgomery, 1975) and normal (Bender, 1976) youths.…”