Noncontingent Reinforcement
Study: Austin & Soeda (2008)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

Teachers identified two students as displaying frequent off-task behavior and referred them for participation in the study.

Describe how students were identified as being at risk for academic failure (AI) or as having emotional/behavioral difficulties (BI):

Participant 1 (Andrew) had been identified as having a specific learning disability and received 140 min of resource specialist program services weekly for reading (and engaged in frequent off-task behavior as reported by teacher). Participant 2 (David) was classified as a general education student and was not receiving special education services but was identified by his teacher as engaging in frequent off-task behavior. Off-task behavior was defined as calling out or engaging in one of the following behaviors for more than 3 seconds: coloring or drawing not appropriate to the assigned task, talking with peers, taking one’s eyes off the teacher or task, or getting out of one’s seat.

ACADEMIC INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• below the 30th percentile on local or national norm, or
• identified disability related to the focus of the intervention?

%

BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• emotional disability label,
• placed in an alternative school/classroom,
• non-responsive to Tiers 1 and 2, or
• designation of severe problem behaviors on a validated scale or through observation?

%

Please describe the study design:

A-B-A-B withdrawal design for two participants A = baseline B = NCR (fixed time schedule of reinforcement)

Clarify and provide a detailed description of the treatment in the submitted program/intervention:

A Motivaider device was used to provide a vibratory cue to the teacher every 4 minutes during the NCR condition. This fixed time schedule of reinforcement was determined based on teacher report of how often she believed she could provide attention to the participants without causing a disruption to her teaching schedule or ongoing classroom activities. Upon receiving the vibratory cue, the teacher provided individual brief attention to each participant appropriate to the child’s behavior (i.e., praise for on-task behavior and redirection for inappropriate behavior). The teacher was asked to alternate between the two participants with regard to which one received attention first and to ignore appropriate and inappropriate behaviors that occurred in the interim between scheduled attention delivery. No explanation of the change in contingencies was provided to the participants. *The reinforcer (teacher attention) was selected based on results of teacher interviews, direct observations, and a series of naturalistic functional analysis conditions (percentage of intervals with disruption was higher during attention condition relative to escape condition for both participants).

Clarify what procedures occurred during the control/baseline condition (third, competing conditions are not considered; if you have a third, competing condition [e.g., multi-element single subject design with a third comparison condition], in addition to your control condition, identify what the competing condition is [data from this competing condition will not be used]):

During baseline, the teacher was asked to respond to the students in her usual manner, which typically included brief reprimands or redirections for inappropriate behavior. (Thus, baseline consisted of contingent attention.)

Please describe how replication of treatment effect was demonstrated (e.g., reversal or withdrawal of intervention, across participants, across settings)

Introduction and withdrawal of NCR intervention for each participant

Please indicate whether (and how) the design contains at least three demonstrations of experimental control (e.g., ABAB design, multiple baseline across three or more participants).

A-B-A-B design allowed three demonstrations of experimental control per participant

If the study is a multiple baseline, is it concurrent or non-concurrent?

N/A

How was the program delivered?

Individually
Small Group
Classroom

Study measures are classified as targeted, broader, or administrative data according to the following definitions:

• Targeted measures
  Assess outcomes, such as competencies or skills, that the program was directly targeted to improve.
  • In the academic domain, targeted measures typically are not the very items taught but rather novel items structured similarly to the content addressed in the program. For example, if a program taught word-attack skills, a targeted measure would be decoding of pseudo words. If a program taught comprehension of cause-effect passages, a targeted measure would be answering questions about cause-effect passages structured similarly to those used during intervention, but not including the very passages used for intervention.
  • In the behavioral domain, targeted measures evaluate aspects of external or internal behavior the program was directly targeted to improve and are operationally defined.
• Broader measures
  Assess outcomes that are related to the competencies or skills targeted by the program but not directly taught in the program.
  • In the academic domain, if a program taught word-level reading skill, a broader measure would be answering questions about passages the student reads. If a program taught calculation skill, a broader measure would be solving word problems that require the same kinds of calculation skill taught in the program.
  • In the behavioral domain, if a program taught a specific skill like on-task behavior in one classroom, a broader measure would be on-task behavior in another setting.
• Administrative data measures apply only to behavioral intervention tools and are measures such as office discipline referrals (ODRs) and graduation rates, which do not have psychometric properties as do other, more traditional targeted or broader measures.

If you have excluded a variable or data that are reported in the study being submitted, explain the rationale for exclusion:

No additional measures were reported.