A Student-Administered Group-Oriented Contingency Intervention:

Abstract

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a student administered group-oriented contingency intervention for increasing the arithmetic performance for four underachieving fifth grade boys in their regular classroom. This intervention trains students to use student-administered procedures within a group context. The technique invovles adapting the four distinct self-control operations (i.e., self-instruction, self-observation, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement) into four separate roles and assigning each role to a group memebr. The treated students performed these procedures with minimal assistance during their regularly scheduled math-drill. An ABAB withdrawal design with six weeks of follow-up data was used to evaluate the intervention. Results indicated that the intervention was effective in increasing the underachieving students' airithmetic performance to where it was indistinguishable from their classmates. The follow-up data were equivocal. Although each student maintained a level of performance superior to their original baseline rate, only one boy continued to improve.