Verbal Praise Research Articles

Assessing the effects of a parenting education program on parental ability to use positive behavior control strategies

A parenting education program delivered to a sample of parents of young children aged 3–12 years who often used negative behavior control strategies to discipline their children was evaluated for effectiveness using a quasi-experimental design. Parents ( n = 150) who received parenting education program intervention program for 8 weeks (weekly 2 hr session) were compared with parents ( n = 150) who did not go through the program. The program’s effectiveness was evaluated with regard to changes in parental disciplinary behavior through observation of parent–child interactions during home visits. Data were collected across three time periods using home observation checklist. Significant improvements in parenting skills were observed as many parents were seen using verbal praise and other positive strategies in dealing with their children; a feat that was lacking before to intervention. The analysis of covariance revealed a significant treatment effect on parenting behavior F(2, 248) = 23.39, p < .05, with the intervention parents demonstrating greater ability to use positive behavior control strategies than did the comparison parents. The magnitude of the effect size was medium (partial η² = .072). This effect persisted over a 12-week follow-up period. These findings indicated that the parenting education program could be effective in helping parents improve their parenting skills and support the parents in creating a safe and supportive home environment that prevent children’s exposure to physical abuse.

A Comparison of Modeling, Prompting, and a Multi-component Intervention for Teaching Play Skills to Children with Developmental Disabilities.

Play skills are an essential component of a learner's repertoire, allowing access to social interactions with peers and adults. Children with developmental disabilities frequently require explicit teaching to acquire play skills rather than acquiring them through natural learning opportunities. Without targeted practice, these deficits could continue to expand, separating the children from their typically developing peers. This study aimed to teach three children with developmental disabilities independent play skills in the form of building blocks with a diagram. We evaluated three methods of teaching play skills, prompting, modeling, and a multi-component approach, within an alternating treatment design to determine which, if any, is most effective. Each teaching strategy included a three-step prompting hierarchy and was paired with an edible reinforcer delivered following independence. Successful responses at the targeted prompt level resulted in verbal praise. Following intervention, the rate of successful responses and independent responses increased across all three participants.

Gifted Students' Motivation and its Impact on the Development of their Giftedness

The aim of the current study is to examine the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of the gifted students from Hadhramout Gifted Center HGC in Yemen, and to investigate the impact of these intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on their giftedness development. A qualitative approach was adopted; data has been collected through an open- ended questionnaire that was prepared by the researcher and distributed among a sample of gifted students who were chosen purposively from HGC. The interpretative phenomenological method has been used to analyze the data using, Atlas ti. The results indicate that the majority of the participants consider it interesting to explore new things, and experience curiosity and desire to achieve their goals as their intrinsic motivations. Whereas, the minority consider preference to serve the community, competition preference and self-confidence as their intrinsic motivations. On the other hand, half of the participants consider rewards as their extrinsic motivation, whereas 40 % of them consider exams scores, verbal praise, parents and environment as their extrinsic motivations. Regarding the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on the development of giftedness, the majority of the participants believe that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations affect positively the development of their giftedness development. Finally, based on the findings, some recommendations were provided.

Acquisition of Tacting Using a Speech-Generating Device in Group Learning Environments for Preschoolers with Autism

Skinner (1957) described the tact as the most important verbal operant; however, there remains a disproportionate amount of research evaluating mand training compared to tact training for young children with autism. The current study sought to alleviate some of this disparity by evaluating the effectiveness of the iPad® and application Proloquo2Go™ as a speech-generating device, using a multiple baseline design, on the acquisition of a tact repertoire in three preschool aged children with autism. The procedures employed a time delay with full physical prompts, during a “circle time” routine. During the circle time routine, the classroom teacher would read the lift-the-flap children’s book “Where’s Spot?” and pause for five-seconds upon reaching the targeted animal for each respective student. During this time delay if the student independently selected the picture that corresponded to the animal, evoking the SGD’s digitized output, the teacher provided verbal praise. If the child did not respond or responded incorrectly, a full physical prompt was used to evoke the tact of the animal. Results indicated that all three participants acquired the ability to tact at least one animal at 100% independence, across three consecutive sessions, after an average of four training sessions. This skill was also found to maintain for those two participants for whom maintenance data were taken. These results extend the evidence base on the use of the iPad® and application Proloquo2Go™ as a SGD, as well as, the research based on tacting acquisition.

An Structure Equation Model Analysis of Elementary School Students on Their School Adjustment Resilience

This study aims to reveal the influence of praise effects of elementary school students on their self-esteem and school adjustment resilience. First, it conducted theoretical study and reviewed the preceding studies and assumed that verbal and physical praise which are sub-factors of praise effects in elementary school students affected their self-esteem and school adjustment resilience. It was also assumed that there was a mediating effects of self-esteem between praise effect and school adjustment resilience of elementary school students. As a result of study on praise effects of elementary school students, it was found that verbal praise had an influence on their self-esteem and school adjustment resilience and physical praise affected their learning attitude. Self-esteem of elementary school students had an influence on their school adjustment resilience. Verbal praise of elementary school students had the greatest influence on their learning attitude. This study proposed policy suggestions of self-esteem and school adjustment resilience as an alternative based on the results of the study.

Use of Praise and Reprimands as Critical Ingredients of Teacher Behavior Management: Effects on Children's Development in the Context of a Teacher-Mediated Classroom Intervention.

This intervention study examined teachers' use of verbal praise and reprimands as specific components of teacher behavior management that can promote children's development in schools. The impact of teacher praise and reprimands on children's development was examined in the context of a teacher-mediated, classroom intervention. The sample involved 570 children and 30 teachers from second grade classrooms in 15 primary schools. The Good Behavior Game was implemented in half of the classrooms based on random assignment within schools. Teacher behavior management (praise for appropriate behavior and reprimands for inappropriate behavior) was observed during regular classroom lessons. Hyperactive, disruptive, and withdrawn child behavior were assessed using teacher and peer reports, global self-concept and emotional engagement were assessed using child self-reports. All variables were assessed at the beginning (pre-test) and at the end (post-test) of the school year. Multilevel regression models accounted for the nested structure of the data. The results suggested positive effects of fewer reprimands and more praise on child outcomes (except emotional school engagement), although the results differed by informant. We also found indirect effects of the Good Behavior Game (GBG) on child outcomes via teacher praise and reprimands. Overall, the study suggests that teachers' use of praise and reprimands is a malleable classroom factor that influences children's behavioral and socio-emotional development.

Extrinsic Rewards Diminish Costly Sharing in 3-Year-Olds.

Two studies investigated the influence of external rewards and social praise in young children's fairness-related behavior. The motivation of ninety-six 3-year-olds' to equalize unfair resource allocations was measured in three scenarios (collaboration, windfall, and dictator game) following three different treatments (material reward, verbal praise, and neutral response). In all scenarios, children's willingness to engage in costly sharing was negatively influenced when they had received a reward for equal sharing during treatment than when they had received praise or no reward. The negative effect of material rewards was not due to subjects responding in kind to their partner's termination of rewards. These results provide new evidence for the intrinsic motivation of prosociality-in this case, costly sharing behavior-in preschool children.

The Effect of Verbal Praise on Maze Completion

The Effect of Verbal Praise on Maze Completion

Skill-building through Task-Oriented Motor Practice (STOMP) intervention for activities of daily living: study protocol for a randomized, single blinded clinical trial.

Progressive disability in activities of daily living (ADL) is inevitable for people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Attempts to slow or prevent ADL disability have been unsuccessful despite making progress in behavioral training methods. Missing from this research is an emphasis on how we maximize a patient's engagement during training and the rigorous examination of implementation protocols (dosing and training methods) which may advantage learning in people with ADRD. Our team addressed this gap with the development of the STOMP (Skill-building through Task-Oriented Motor Practice) intervention which creates methods for obtaining ADL goals that support "personhood" and tests high-intensity protocols that appear to advantage learning and sustained learning over time. Through this study, we aim to evaluate differential outcomes by dose levels as well as assess the moderating effects of attention to task during training. Randomized-controlled trial with 32 participants with dementia assigned to either the original, intensive STOMP protocol (3 hours/day, 5 days/week for 2 weeks) or a less-intensive STOMP protocol (1 hour/day, 2 days/week for 2 weeks) delivered by an occupational therapy assistant in the home. ADL training is delivered using motor learning theory techniques of blocked practice, continuous verbal praise, errorless learning and intense dosing schedules. Inclusion criteria: English speaking, adults 50-80 years old that live with a legally-authorized representative that can provide consent, who can follow a one-step command, have three ADL goals they want to address and can participate in an intense therapy protocol. Exclusions include diagnoses of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Dementia, delirium or receptive/global aphasia. Recruitment will occur through direct mailing, physician referral and media/support group presentations. Blinded occupational therapists will complete baseline, post-intervention and 3-month follow-up assessments in the home. Repeated measures ANOVA and graphs will be used to interpret and display results. Through this protocol, we will examine differential outcomes by dose for the STOMP ADL intervention. Our results will inform dosing parameters for future intervention studies for people with ADRD. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02356055. This study protocol was approved by the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Institutional Review Board (#4648) and will be performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Using a verbal prompt to increase protein consumption in a hospital setting: a field study.

BackgroundSufficient protein intake among hospitalized patients may contribute to faster recovery and a decrease in healthcare costs. Nevertheless, hospitalized patients are often found to consume too little protein. This field study explored the success of a small, inexpensive intervention adapted from the marketing literature, to encourage protein consumption among hospitalized patients.MethodsThe study was performed at a hospital where patients order food by calling to the meal service. The intervention consisted of a verbal prompt: “Would you like some [target product] with that?”, which was presented to patients by trained telephone operators, after patients finished ordering their lunch. Target products were two foods rich in protein; fruit quark and yoghurt drink. For half of the patients, the verbal prompt was preceded by verbal praise on their lunch order, which was aimed to increase compliance with the verbal prompt.ResultsThree hundred and fifteen hospitalized patients, aged 18–87 years took part in the study. Verbal prompts significantly increased ordering of the target products nearly sevenfold (from ordering by 6.5 % of patients to 45.2 % of patients). Protein content of ordered lunch and all food orders of the day combined showed a trend, with orders of patients receiving only a verbal prompt or a verbal prompt and verbal praise containing a larger amount of protein than lunch orders of patients in the control condition. At an individual level, protein content of ordered food increased significantly, reaching the 25–30 g of protein per main meal recommended by dieticians of the hospital. Verbal praise did not increase compliance with the verbal prompt. Patients consumed most or all of the target product and verbal prompts were not perceived to be obtrusive.ConclusionsAlthough changing eating patterns is challenging, this study shows that simple interventions such as verbal prompts may be useful tools for health professionals to stimulate healthy food consumption among patients during hospitalization.

Behavioural spillover in the environmental domain: An intervention study

This study tests hypotheses about behavioural spillover in the environmental domain as well as the impacts of monetary inducements and verbal praise on behavioural spillover by means of a field experiment. A sample of 194 students from a large university in Denmark were randomly allocated to a control group or to one of two experimental conditions where they were encouraged to purchase “green” products by means of either financial compensation and incentives or verbal encouragement and praise. Participants answered a baseline survey containing questions concerning a wide range of environmentally relevant behaviours and after a six weeks intervention period where they were requested to keep track of their purchases by means of a shopping diary they answered a second survey with the same content as the first. This allowed us to analyse the change in self-reported pro-environmental behaviours over the six weeks, to identify instances of behavioural spillover from “green” purchase behaviour to other pro-environmental behaviours and to investigate if such spillover was affected by the nature of the intervention. The study revealed a positive spillover from “green” purchasing to other pro-environmental behaviours. However, the spillover mostly affects low-cost behaviours. Not unexpectedly, the monetary inducement had a stronger direct impact on “green” shopping than verbal encouragement and praise. However, contrary to popular beliefs, the spillover effects of a monetary inducement on other pro-environmental behaviours are at least as strong as that of verbal encouragement and praise.

High fives motivate: the effects of gestural and ambiguous verbal praise on motivation

The type of praise children receive influences whether children choose to persist after failure. One mechanism through which praise affects motivation is through the causal attributions inferred from language. For example, telling a child “You got an A on the test because you’re smart,” provides an explicit link between possessing a trait and an outcome, specifically that intelligence causes success. Nonetheless, most praise given to children is ambiguous, or lacks explicit attributions (e.g., “yea” or a thumbs up). To investigate the effects of ambiguous praise on motivation, we randomly assigned 95 5–6-year-old children to a praise condition (verbal trait; verbal effort; verbal ambiguous; or gestural) and measured motivation using task persistence, self-evaluations, and eye fixations on errors. Ambiguous praise, similar to verbal effort praise, produced higher persistence and self-evaluations, and fewer fixations on error after failure compared to verbal trait praise. Interestingly, gestures produced the highest self-evaluations. Thus, praise without explicit attributions motivated as well or better than praise explicitly focused on effort, which may suggest that children interpret ambiguous praise in the most beneficial manner.

EVALUATION OF ERRORLESS COMPLIANCE TRAINING IN A GENERAL EDUCATION CLASSROOM

Errorless compliance training (ECT) is a success‐based, nonaversive intervention to reduce child noncompliance that has been shown to be effective in both home and special education settings. In the current study, ECT was evaluated in a multiple‐baseline across‐subjects design with three kindergarten students who displayed noncompliant behavior in their general education classrooms. The researcher delivered a range of classroom requests to each student to determine the probability of compliance for each request. Requests were then arranged in a hierarchy, ranging from those initially yielding high compliance probabilities (level 1) to those yielding low compliance (level 4). At the beginning of treatment, students were presented with a high number of level 1 requests and provided verbal praise for compliance. Over several weeks, lower probability requests were faded in. The three students demonstrated considerable improvement in compliance levels during and following treatment. Improved compliance generalized to low‐probability requests not used in treatment. When the teacher delivered requests, results of generalization were mixed. The results provide preliminary support for the use of errorless compliance training in the general education setting. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Impact of Verbal Praise on Teachers Motivation: Implications for Coping with 21st Century Challenges

<em>This work investigated the impact of verbal praise on teachers’ motivation. The study was conducted with 612 teachers in six public primary school in Owerri West Local Government Area of Imo State, Nigeria. Teachers from the schools were assigned into treatment and control groups respectively. On the day of their experiment a Personal Orientation Questionnaire (POQ) was given to teachers as pretest. Teachers were asked to take up four topics in primary science which lasted for four weeks. At the end of each lesson, teachers in the experimental group were encouraged verbally by the head of their schools and the research assistants but those in control group were not encouraged. At the end, Actualization Motivation Questionnaire, (AMQ) was given to the teachers as post-test. The data collected were analyzed with mean scores, standard deviation and ANCOVA. It was found that verbal praise promoted teachers actualization and motivation more than those non-verbal praise. Again,verbal praise enhanced female teachers performance higher than the male teachers. Recommendations were made based on the findings that school heads and government should accompany teachers’ school performance with public verbal praise.</em>

Teaching Object Permanence: An Action Research Study

Object permanence, also known as object concept in the field of visual impairment, is one of the most important early developmental milestones (Fazzi & Klein, 2002; Morss, 1984). The achievement of object permanence is associated with the onset of representational thought and language (Bruce & Zayyad, 2009; Wright, Lewis, & Collis, 2006). Object permanence is important to orientation, including the recognition of landmarks (Anthony, Bleier, Fazzi, Kish, & Pogrund, 2002). Independent mobility (such as crawling) improves visual attentiveness, which is critical to the achievement of later object permanence tasks (Bozeman& McCulley, 2010). Direct instruction can accelerate the mastery of object permanence in children with disabilities (Kahn, 1976; 1984; Morss, 1984; Rogers & Puchalski, 1988) and is more effective than general stimulation programs (Sloper, Glenn, & Cunningham, 1986). This article presents an action research study on teaching object permanence to a child with multiple disabilities and visual impairment. It illustrates some of the principles of assessment and instruction described in Bruce and Vargas (2012). The Institutional Review Board at Boston College approved this study, which was part of a set of action research studies on pivotal milestones that were conducted with children with multiple disabilities. THE PARTICIPANT Jamie, the participant in the study, was a 4-year old girl with severe, global developmental delays; a seizure disorder; and nonambulation (with no other independent means of mobility). Jamie had progressive myopia (with higher myopia in her right eye), staphyloma, and a tilted optic disc in her right eye; hypoplasia (in both eyes); nystagmus; and probable ocular motor apraxia. Although Jamie's visual acuity for stripes was measured at 20/94 with the best correction, this method underestimates visual responses to more complex and typical visual stimuli. Thus, her ophthalmologist determined that she was legally blind and referred her for registration with the state's Commission for the Blind. Jamie had poor visual attention; she struggled to make eye contact and to share joint visual attention on an object. Her visual attentiveness improved with prompts paired with pauses that allowed her time to direct her visual attention. Jamie had a history of sporadic ear infections and had tubes in her ears. Although later testing indicated that she had normal hearing, it is reasonable to suspect that she may have had a history of intermittent, mild hearing loss because of ear infections. However, she was consistently able to respond to verbal inputs during the study and was often observed to smile when provided with verbal praise. Jamie was also nonambulatory and displayed immature grasp patterns. RESULTS OF THE ASSESSMENT The action research team selected the following three assessment tools to determine Jamie's present level of performance on object permanence tasks: the Hawaii Early Profile (Parks, 2004); Assessment, Evaluation, and Programming System for Infants and Children, Second Edition, Volume 2, Test Birth to Three Years and Three to Six Years (Bricker et al., 2003); and Structured Informal Assessment of Object Permanence (Bruce & Vargas, 2012). The baseline assessment revealed that Jamie had achieved the following precursor behaviors to object permanence: She visually focused on a person or object (when prompting and pause were provided), visually followed an object moving in horizontal and vertical directions, and reacted to the disappearance of a slow-moving object or person (with a smile). She also exhibited the following early object permanence behaviors: She located a partially hidden object when concealment was observed and occasionally located a concealed object (when concealment was observed) and a constant auditory sound (emitting from the concealed object) was provided. Jamie was not able to locate a concealed object without sound cues or when concealment was not observed. …

Effect of Verbal Praise on Achievement Goal Orientation, Motivation, and Performance Attribution

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of verbal praise. Modeled after the work of Mueller and Dweck, participants were 87 fourth-grade students who each took a simple rhythm-tapping test and were assigned one of three treatments: (a) verbal praise for effort, (b) verbal praise for talent, or (c) no praise. Each student was then asked to select an achievement goal (performance or learning) followed by a second rhythm-tapping test of challenging rhythms. Following both tasks, students were asked to rate measures of motivation and performance attribution. Results indicated that students who received praise for effort more often selected learning goals and reported a higher attitude toward task persistence. Students who received praise for talent more frequently selected performance goals. Results suggest that music teachers and teacher educators might examine the use of verbal praise and reconsider how the idea of talent or ability is conveyed within the context of a music classroom.

A narrative review of psychological and educational strategies applied to young children's eating behaviours aimed at reducing obesity risk

Strategies to reduce risk of obesity by influencing preschool children's eating behaviour are reviewed. The studies are placed in the context of relevant psychological processes, including inherited and acquired preferences, and behavioural traits, such as food neophobia, 'enjoyment of food' and 'satiety responsiveness'. These are important influences on how children respond to feeding practices, as well as predictors of obesity risk. Nevertheless, in young children, food environment and experience are especially important for establishing eating habits and food preferences. Providing information to parents, or to children, on healthy feeding is insufficient. Acceptance of healthy foods can be encouraged by five to ten repeated tastes. Recent evidence suggests rewarding healthy eating can be successful, even for verbal praise alone, but that palatable foods should not be used as rewards for eating. Intake of healthier foods can be promoted by increasing portion size, especially in the beginning of the meal. Parental strategies of pressuring to eat and restriction do not appear to be causally linked to obesity, but are instead primarily responses to children's eating tendencies and weight. Moderate rather than frequent restriction may improve healthy eating in children. Actively positive social modelling by adults and peers can be effective in encouraging healthier eating.

A clinical demonstration of a treatment package for food selectivity.

Food selectivity is the most commonly reported and researched feeding problem in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (Seiverling, Williams, Ward-Horner, & Sturmey, 2011). Children have been found to be selective by food type, texture, color, temperature, freshness, as well as other dimensions. In children with ASD, eating a narrow range of foods has been shown to be associated with a variety of problems such as reduced bone cortical thickness (Hediger, England, Mollov, Yu, & Manning-Courtney, 2008), Vitamin A, D, and C deficiencies (Clark, 1993; Duggen, Westra, & Rosenberg, 2007; Uyanik, Dogangun, Kavaalp, Kormaz, & Dervent, 2006), and iron deficiencies (Latif, Heinz, & Cook, 2002). In addition, Lockner, Crowe, and Skipper (2008) found that parents of children with ASD were more likely to give their children non-prescription vitamin/mineral supplements when compared with parents of children without ASD whose children were not as picky and resistant to trying to new foods. This suggests that parents of children with ASD may be more concerned regarding inadequacies in their children's diet variety. Parents may also find mealtimes stressful when attempting to encourage a child with food selectivity to take bites of new or non-preferred foods, as often children will engage in high levels of disruptive behaviors when their preferred foods are not presented (Williams & Seiverling, 2010). The interventions described in studies of food selectivity involve multiple treatment components. These components often include the following: a) stimulus fading combined with reinforcement schedule thinning, in which some dimension of the meal is gradually changed, such as portion sizes being gradually increased; b) differential reinforcement, in which inappropriate behavior is ignored and child acceptance of the presented bites of food is reinforced with verbal praise or access to tangible reinforcers; and c) escape extinction (EE), in which the child is required to consume either a specified number of bites before exiting the eating area, and escape-maintained problem behavior does not lead to termination of the meal. The EE procedure often occurs in one of two forms: (1) non-removal of the spoon, which involves presenting the food until the child accepts it; or (2) physical guidance, which involves physically prompting the child to take a bite. Most intervention studies for food selectivity, as well as for food refusal, have implemented treatment packages involving differential reinforcement, fading, and some form of EE (Anderson & McMillan, 2001; Freeman & Piazza, 1998; Najdowski, Wallace, Doney, & Ghezzi, 2003; McCartney, Anderson, & English, 2005). Further, component analyses have demonstrated that although positive reinforcement is sometimes sufficient, EE is often a necessary component of effective treatments for food selectivity and food refusal (Cooper et al., 1995; Hoch, et al., 2001; Penrod, Wallace, Reagon, Betz, & Higbee, 2010). Although often necessary, EE has been associated with high rates of inappropriate collateral behaviors, especially in the initial stages of treatment and when physical guidance is a component (Gentry & Luiselli, 2008). Thus, these collateral behaviors may at times lead families and clinicians to approach the use of EE with hesitation. Although several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of treatments of food selectivity that do not involve EE (Ahearn, 2003; Buckley, Strunk, & Newchok, 2005; Gentry & Luiselli, 2008; Levin & Carr, 2001; Patel, Reed, Piazza, Mueller, Backmeyer, & Layer, 2007) it is typically unknown whether EE will be a necessary component prior to implementing an intervention. Therefore, EE is often implemented in food selectivity cases. Given the negative side effects that sometimes accompany EE, it is worthwhile to explore alternative approaches that do not include EE or that use minimal use of EE. …

Editorial: Behavioral interventions and considerations.

INTRODUCTION In this issue, we are pleased to publish four contributions that all focus on the use of behavior analytic theory and procedures in institutions. Two of the articles focus on the prison population, and analyzing the verbal behavior and metacontingencies surrounding how prisoners behave and their likelihood of recidivism. The other two articles focus on using behavioral procedures to provide effective educational systems for use in both higher education and in training practitioners. Hence, we can see the value of using behavior analysis in these articles in terms of the relevance to real-world problems. Weatherly, Montes, Peters, and Wilson (2013) suggest that we look at gambling in prison populations as a function of escape-maintained behavior. The over-representation of gambling behavior among this population, and of those who gain release (and reentry to the prison system), provides a strong reason to study this behavior. This paper, rightly so, is a call to action to study this problem both generally, and specifically as it applies to prison populations. Bowman and Travis (2013) present an empirical study of verbal behavior among those who were previously incarcerated, their family members, service providers, and parole officers. Their study leads to the following position: Those who are incarcerated undergo an establishing operation (deprivation) that leads them to try to behave according to the verbal stimuli that are presented (i.e., follow rule-governed behavior). If the verbal stimuli are relatively clear and easy to follow, then the individual receives verbal praise and other reinforcers. If the verbal stimuli are ambiguous or unclear, then the behavior is much more difficult to achieve, and verbal praise and other reinforcers are less likely. In the former condition, recidivism is less likely, and in the latter it is much more likely. Here too, then is an important call to action for further research. Oliveria, Goyos, and Pear (2013) report on the use of a computer-aided personalized system of instruction (CAPSI) to provide instruction for matching-to-sample training provides an initial comparison of the traditional use of a training manual versus using the manual and CAPSI together. This study is an important addition in that it tackles the issues surrounding the use of technology to provide greater access to behavioral principles and procedures for training purposes, mastery-based criteria, and the mode in which it is delivered. …

The use and frequency of verbal and non-verbal praise in nurture groups

Nurture groups are a form of provision for children with social, emotional, behavioural and learning difficulties. The study examines the interactions between children and staff – in particular, the frequency and effects of verbal and non-verbal praise – and discusses how this contributes to its effectiveness as a positive intervention instrument for all children. Results from structured observations confirmed that interactions in four nurture groups were positive and likely to enhance the self-esteem of pupils. Staff in all nurture groups used a higher frequency of specific verbal praise compared to non-verbal praise, despite results from children's responses to praise revealing that nearly a half of the children responded to non-verbal praise by continuing with appropriate behaviours. An interesting and unexpected finding revealed that as time passed the frequency of both verbal and non-verbal praise reduced. The study highlights how the frequency of certain behaviours such as non-verbal praise can impact on children's behaviour.