Generalization Programming and Performance Feedback: A Writing Intervention with Third-Grade Students

Despite the importance of explicitly programming generalization in the context of intervention studies (Stokes & Osnes, 1989), the research base is limited, especially with respect to academic interventions. Given that writing is a particular area of concern in the United States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012), this is an important area to target. As such, the purpose of this study was to examine the benefit of incorporating explicit generalization programming tactics into a performance feedback intervention that has received support for increasing students’ writing fluency (Hier & Eckert, 2014). Toward this aim, 52 third-grade students were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (a) performance feedback, or (b) performance feedback with generalization programming. Four generalization assessments were administered during pre- and post-assessment phases. It was hypothesized that students receiving performance feedback with generalization programming tactics would outperform a condition receiving performance feedback alone across the generalization assessments. This hypothesis was not supported for any of the generalization assessments. Rather, students in both conditions demonstrated similar improvements in their post-assessment writing performance. As such, in the context of this study, there was not a significant benefit added to the performance feedback intervention by including generalization programming tactics

Generalization Programming and the Instructional Hierarchy: A Performance Feedback Intervention in Writing

National assessments have indicated that a large number of students in the United States are underperforming in writing (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012; Persky, Daane, &;; Jin, 2003). Accordingly, there is a clear need for research to identify appropriate interventions targeting writing. One intervention that has received empirical support is performance feedback (Van Houten et al., 1974, 1975, 1979). However, few performance feedback studies have explicitly targeted generalization. The primary purpose of the current study was to examine the extent to which 116 third-grade students, randomly assigned to a generalization programming (n = 39), performance feedback (n = 38), or practice-only condition (n = 39), demonstrated gains in writing fluency and were able to demonstrate stimulus and response generalization. It was hypothesized that (a) students in both intervention conditions would significantly outperform the practice-only condition in writing fluency growth and (b) students in the generalization programming condition would demonstrate stronger performance on measures of stimulus and response generalization as a result of explicit programming tactics targeting generalized skills along the sequence of the Instructional Hierarchy (Haring &;; Eaton, 1978). There was mixed support for the hypotheses, as students in the performance feedback condition demonstrated statistically significant greater writing fluency growth in comparison to both the practice-only and generalization programming conditions. In comparison to students assigned to practice-only or performance feedback conditions, students assigned to the generalization programming condition demonstrated significantly greater performance on a measure of response generalization; however, there were no differences between the conditions on a measure of stimulus generalization