Behavioral Momentum During a Continuous Reading Task: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often fail to master literacy skills, in part because disruptive behaviors interfere with task engagement and persistence. The theory of behavioral momentum explains the persistence of behavior in the face of changing environmental conditions. The current exploratory study examined variables related to behavioral momentum in the context of a continuous reading task. Participants were three adolescents identified with EBD who were instructional on fifth-grade material. Results indicated that when participants read a third-grade paragraph immediately before a fifth-grade paragraph, they decreased the latency to initiate reading of the fifth-grade paragraph and increased words read correctly per minute on the first 10 words of the fifth-grade paragraph. Results are discussed in terms of the theory of behavioral momentum and the nature of interventions that may be developed to increase reading persistence.

Appendix

Sample pair of passages with paragraph readability indicated in parentheses (Note: participants read these passages one paragraph per page and did not have readability calculations on their version).

The 1936 Heat Wave (Intervention Passage)

Good weather for farms in the Great Plains changed at the start of the Thirties. A very long and severe drought began. This caused crops to fail, leaving the fields exposed to the strong winds. Sadly, the soil of the Great Plains eroded. (3.1)

Heat waves occur during the dog days of summer. In some places, the air and ground easily heat to excess. This particularly happens in areas with high air pressure. Sometimes, the excessive air pressure leads to a heat wave. (5.4)

On one day, a strong dust storm stripped soil from South Dakota farms. That storm was only one of a series of harsh dust storms that year. The dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago where dirt fell like snow. That year, the storms made red colored dirt snow fall on New England. (3.2)

Amazingly, twenty of the worst dirt storms were on one Sunday. These “Black Blizzards” caused extensive damage and mostly blocked out the sun. Witnesses said that because of the storms, they could not see five feet in front of them at some points. The dust storms were so awful that roosters thought that it was night instead of daytime. (5.3)

This heat wave started early in the summer. The Midwest had some of the hottest days on record. Hot weather and lack of rain lead to drought conditions. Drought spread out all over the United States. (3.6)

Sadly, farms failed quickly due to the extreme heat and drought conditions. In some areas, soil got as blistering hot as two hundred degrees. Crops could not flourish in the intense conditions. The soil temperatures were high enough to all forms of life in the dirt. (5.3)

Many suffered from heat stroke that summer. People in cities were often hurt the worst. Unlike today, there was no way to keep buildings cool. Homes did not have air conditioning. (3.8)

Thankfully, the heat wave and drought conditions ended in the fall. Many states, however, were still drier and warmer than they had been in years past. Most farmers’ fields and many people’s lawns were still horribly parched. Weather returned to normal later in the fall. (5.3)

More droughts and heat waves were a common thing during the Thirties. These harsh droughts brought on more dust storms and depleted the soil. Farmers saw their worst harvests on record. Farmers had to give up farming and move to the cities. (3.3)

In the end, the death toll from these horrific heat waves approached the thousands. The heat waves were the worst event caused by nature in recent memory. The Thirties will go down in history as the driest and warmest decade. Some of the weather records set in the 1936 heat wave still stand. (5.6)

The Dust Bowl (Traditional Passage)

The dust bowl was a period of severe dust storms. It caused major damage to American prairie lands during the Thirties. It was caused by drought and years of heavy farming. Farmers had not used crop rotation or other plans to prevent erosion. (5.8)

The Midwest had gone through an unusually wet period that encouraged people to settle there to farm. But, this growth period ended in 1930. This was the year in which a drought began. This caused crops to fail, leaving the fields exposed to wind. (5.5)

Deep plowing of the topsoil killed the grasses that normally kept the soil in place. These grasses trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. Because the grasses had been killed, there was nothing to protect the land. (5.8)

During the drought of the Thirties, soil turned to dust. It blew away eastward and southward in large dark clouds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean. (5.3)

These huge dust storms were sometimes called Black Blizzards and Black Rollers. They reduced people’s sight to a few feet when they were bad. The dust bowl hurt more than one million acres of land. The worst areas were in Texas and Oklahoma, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. (5.8)

One storm caused 356 houses to be torn down. And the disaster began just as the economy was getting worse. These hard times left more than a half million people homeless. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their states. (5.3)

Some of these families moved to California and other states. They found things no better than what they had left. These people were known as “Okies,” since so many came from Oklahoma. They travelled from farm to farm, picking fruit and other crops at low wages, trying to earn enough money to buy food. (5.8)

John Steinbeck later wrote the classic novel The Grapes of Wrath about these people. The book is about the displaced Joad family who travels west in search of work. The book details the dust, dirt, and despair of the times. (5.2)

The dust bowl was an ecological and human disaster caused by misuse of land. Years of sustained drought made it worse. Farmland became useless. Yet, no one seemed able to correct the situation. (5.5)

The government finally started programs to repair the soil. They knew they needed to fix the natural balance if farmers were going to grow crops again. This program exists today. Modern farmers still rely on these programs to guard the soil. (5.9).