Studies about Hand-raising for Kindergarteners Essay

Studies about Hand-raising for Kindergarteners - Essay Example Here, we review three articles relating to hand-raising with respect to behavioral training. In an early study, investigators used a class of twenty four, 9 to 12 year old behaviorally challenged students (21 male, three female) at the Garfield School in Salt Lake City, Utah (Greenwood, C. R., Sloane, H. N., Jr., & Baskin, A., 1974). A training procedure and two maintenance contingencies on consequence dispensing behavior were explored. Four peer behavior managers were trained to supervise four to six subjects each to work in programmed math materials. Their behavior was compared with a teacher skilled in the use of social and point reinforcement and response cost. A component of many of the appropriate behaviors was hand-raising. The training was partially effective in increasing rates of appropriate social and point dispensing behaviors in managers. Manager reinforcement contingent consequence-dispensing behavior in managers resulted in moderately higher rates of appropriate social and point dispensing behavior for three of four subjects than did having manager reinforcem ent contingent upon group study behavior. Two managers exposed to the group performance consequence before the manager performance consequence increased inappropriate social and point-dispensing behaviors to pre-training base levels. ... It included visual reminders, goal evaluation, positive reinforcement, and constructive feedback at regular intervals. Outcome of three measures of peripheral variables (direct observations of hand raising frequency and talking out of turn during the group sessions and Conners conduct problem ratings). The cueing procedure resulted in significant and robust improvement in two of the three peripheral measures (hand raising frequency ES = 2.73; talking out of turn ES = 2.89). This underscores the benefit of using a theoretical framework for guiding the design and evaluation of therapeutic interventions for children with ADHD. At a professional conference, researchers presented the case studies of two individuals. Jim is a ninth grade bilingual student who has been referred for special education services due to his poor academic performance (Miller, K., Koury, K., Mitchem, K., Fitzgerald, G., & Hollingsead, C., 2005). One of the target behaviors selected for improvement was the raising of the hand and waiting for permission to speak. As part of the intervention, Jim used a self monitoring point card system from KidTools to track his behavior in class. At a timer that sounded every five minutes, Jim recorded his behavior as on-task or off-task. At the end of the week, Jim earned points to purchase items while completing a reinforcement inventory if he was "on-task" for an average of at least 80% of the momentary time sampling opportunities. During the first three days of the intervention, Jim went from being off task on five time sampling observations to being 100% on-task. As reported by his teacher, the i ntervention was very successful as the occurrence of off-task behavior decreased and the student's on-task behavior