Abstract
In a private school for behaviorally deviant children, 2 teachers who led orderly discussions were designated as “comparison teachers” and two whose discussions were characterized by excessive disruptiveness were designated “target teachers.” Appropriate and disruptive student behaviors as well as positive, neutral, and negative teacher attention contingent upon each class of student behavior were recorded. In an ABA design with follow-up, intervention consisted of training the target teachers to dispense negative attention contingent upon student disruptiveness in a manner similar to that of the most effective comparison teachers. Intervention reduced disruptiveness in the target classrooms, and follow-up indicated that skills learned by target teachers were being used effectively 3 months later. Comparison teachers decreased use of negative attention throughout the year without loss of classroom control.
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The procedure and preliminary results of this study were presented at the workshop entitled “The socialization of children with behavior and learning disorders” at the annual meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, Washington, D.C., March, 1971. The research was carried out while the senior author was serving a clinical internship at the Neuropsychiatric Institute, U.C.L.A. Center for the Health Sciences, supported by NIMH Training Grant #2 TO 1 MH 7593-10. Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. Fredric H. Jones, Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester Medical Center, 260 Crittenden Boulevard, Rochester, New York 14642.
Research was carried out at the Laurence School, Van Nuys, California, under the supervision and support of the Director of the Laurence School, Mr. Marvin Jacobson, his associates, Mrs. Sonya Braverman and Mrs. Grace Lee, and psychological counsultant Mrs. Lillian B. Vogel. The full cooperation of the teaching staff and the efforts of the two volunteer raters, Mrs. Bertha Kas and Mrs. Dena Davis, are gratefully acknowledged.
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Jones, F.H., Miller, W.H. The Effective Use of Negative Attention for Reducing Group Disruption in Special Elementary School Classrooms. Psychol Rec 24, 435–448 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394264
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394264