Behavioral Self‐management in Story Writing With Elementary School Children1

Abstract

The effect of self-management procedures on objective writing responses and on the subjectively assessed quality of children's writing was investigated. All experimental procedures were applied to each of the 37 children in a regular Grade 3 class, and 14 of these children were randomly selected for data collection. Following baseline conditions, self-assessment plus self-recording of writing responses was introduced. This did not increase the number of sentences, number of different action words, or number of different describing words, or improve the quality of the stories. Self-determined and self-administered reinforcement was added to the self-assessment and self-recording procedures contingent on each of the writing responses in turn. Rates of responding were substantially increased and the stories received higher subjective ratings of quality from two independent judges. An increase in on-task behavior was correlated with self-reinforcement of writing responses.

The Use of Goal Setting and Contingency Contracting for Improving Children's Homework Performance

“…Also, children were required to evaluate their own behavior during goal setting by determining whether they had achieved their goals. In this manner, children learned to monitor their own behavior, which is an important step toward self-control and is associated with increased accuracy in many curricular areas (Ballard & Glynn, 1975;Koegel, Koegel, & Ingham, 1986).…”

Behavior Analytic Studies of Creativity: A Critical Review

“…Drawing and painting (e.g., Holman, Goetz, & Baer, 1977), story-telling (i.e., Baker & Winston, in press) and blockbuilding (Goetz & Baer, 1973) have been studied in children aged 3 to 6 years. Creative writing has been studied in children aged 8 years and older (i.e., Ballard & Glynn, 1975 (Funderbunk, 1976;Glover & Gary, 1976), such as the Torrance Tests of Creativity (Torrance, 1966). Parsonson and Baer (1978) Ballard and Glynn (1975) trained 8 and 9 year old children to self-determine and self-administer points contingent on objective parts of speech in their written stories.…”

“…Creative writing has been studied in children aged 8 years and older (i.e., Ballard & Glynn, 1975 (Funderbunk, 1976;Glover & Gary, 1976), such as the Torrance Tests of Creativity (Torrance, 1966). Parsonson and Baer (1978) Ballard and Glynn (1975) trained 8 and 9 year old children to self-determine and self-administer points contingent on objective parts of speech in their written stories. A different self-control procedure was employed by Baker and Winston (in press).…”

Application of the “Generalization Map” to a Self‐control Intervention With School‐aged Children

“…Self-control training, diffusely defined, encompasses a variety of techniques which are designed to help students assume more and more of the direct management of their own academic achievement and classroom deportment. Self-control researchers have demonstrated: (a) Grade school children can effectively be taught to self-monitor, self-evaluate, and self-reinforce contingently for academic and classroom behaviors under externally imposed, experimenter contingencies (Ballard & Glynn, 1975;Bolstad & Johnson, 1972;Clement, Anderson, Arnold, Butman, Fantuzzo, & May, 1978;Glynn, Thomas, & Shee, 1973 (SUMMER 1984) equally effective (Bolstad & Johnson, 1972;Fredericksen & Fredericksen, 1975) or more effective (Edgar & Clement, 1980;Parks, Fine, & Hopkins, 1974) than externally administered and determined procedures. (c) Students can determine their own performance standards and contingencies, and when combined with reinforcement, these self-determined contingencies are either as effective (Felixbrod & O'Leary, 1973 or more effective (Brownell, Colletti, Ersner-Hershfield, Hershfield, & Wilson, 1977;Lovitt & Curtiss, 1969) than externally determined contingencies.…”

“…The rationale is that the child is the best contingency manager because she or he can deliver reinforcement immediately at all times and across all settings (Clement, 1973). Despite the logic of this hypothesis, only a handful of studies have investigated the generality of self-control interventions across persons (Fantuzzo & Clement, 1981;Fantuzzo, Harrell, & McLeod, 1979), settings (Burgio, Whitman, & Johnson, 1980;Drabman, Spitalnik, & O'Leary, 1973;Robertson, Simon, Pachman, & Drabman, 1979;Turkewitz, O'Leary, & Ironsmith, 1975;Varni & Henker, 1979), behaviors (Ballard & Glynn, 1975), and time periods (Arnold & Clement, 1981;Brownell et al, 1977;Felixbrod & O'Leary, 1974;Robertson et al, 1979). These studies differ from our investigation in that they were either conducted in contrived settings or the assessment of generalization was not the primary focus.…”