Alhambra, Lori A.

Farmer-Dougan, Faculty Advisor, Valeri

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Illinois Wesleyan UniversityDigital Commons @ IWUJohn Wesley Powell Student ResearchConference 1996, 7th Annual JWP ConferenceApr 13th, 1:30 PM - 2:30 PMProducing the Optimal Level of Disruption DuringIncidental Teaching: When is Too Much and TooLittle?Lori A. AlhambraIllinois Wesleyan UniversityValeri Farmer-Dougan, Faculty AdvisorIllinois State UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprcThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by The Ames Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Curricular and FacultyDevelopment, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the President. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Commons @ IWU bythe faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@iwu.edu.©Copyright is owned by the author of this document.Lori A. Alhambra and Valeri Farmer-Dougan, Faculty Advisor, "Producing the Optimal Level of Disruption DuringIncidental Teaching: When is Too Much and Too Little?" (April 13, 1996). John Wesley Powell Student ResearchConference. Paper 22.http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/1996/posters/22THE JOHN WESLEY POWELL STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE· APRIL 1996 Poster Presentation 20 PRODUCING THE OPTIMAL LEVEL OF DISRUPTION DURING INCIDENTAL TEACHING: WHEN IS TOO MUCH AND TOO LITTLE? Lori A. Alhambra, Department of Psychology, IWU and Valeri Farmer-Dougan*, Department of Psychology, ISU The disequilibrium theory (Timberlake & Farmer-Dougan, 1991) is a behavioral economic model of reinforcement that allows specific predictions about the direction and magnitude of reinforcement effects . Incidental teaching, a behavioral intervention often used to increase social and verbal behavior, is one procedure in which such predictions can be made. Recently, Farmer-Dougan and Dougan ( 1995) tested the reinforcement effects produced by changes in the probability of a teacher disrupting an initiation to a toy item on on-task behavior of Head Start preschoolers. Results indicated that there was an optimal level for disrupting ongoing behavior, above or below which reinforcement effects greatly suffered. The present experiment, a direct test of the disequilibrium model of reinforcement, examined whether an optimal level of disruption could be produced.  Local Head Start preschoolers played with toys without interruptions (baseline) and with interruptions in which continued access to toys were made contingent upon a language response. Interruptions of ongoing play behavior were varied across four levels: 15 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 minute. The amount of time in which the target children spent in play and response behavior were measured across seSSIons. 

Producing the Optimal Level of Disruption During Incidental Teaching: When is Too Much and Too Little?

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Producing the Optimal Level of Disruption During Incidental Teaching: When is Too Much and Too Little?

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