Adverse effects of differential parental attention.
Differential attention can backfire—four of six preschoolers got worse—so probe effects early and pivot if behavior escalates.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Six preschoolers lived at home with their parents.
Researchers asked moms and dads to give smiles and hugs only when the child played nicely.
They used an ABAB reversal design: baseline, differential attention, back to baseline, then back to differential attention.
The goal was to see if ignoring misbehavior while praising good behavior would cut deviant acts.
What they found
Four kids got worse.
Their yelling, hitting, and toy throwing rose when parents switched to differential attention.
Two kids stayed the same.
No child improved.
How this fits with other research
Rosenfeld et al. (1970) saw the opposite in a classroom.
Teacher praise for on-task work quickly boosted attention for two second-graders.
The same ABAB design, but in school with teachers, worked great.
Mueller et al. (2000) later showed that giving peer attention for free, not as a reward, cut disruptive acts.
Again, attention helped when it was noncontingent.
Gardner et al. (2009) added a twist: high-quality adult attention during hard tasks can even beat escape reinforcement.
Together these studies say the setting, the giver, and the child’s reason for acting matter as much as the attention plan.
Why it matters
Before you tell parents to “ignore the bad, praise the good,” run a quick probe.
Watch for spikes in problem behavior during the first session.
If the child escalates, stop and reassess with a brief functional analysis like Rasing et al. (1992) or Green et al. (1999).
Differential attention is not one-size-fits-all; it can fuel the very behavior you want to stop.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In two independent parent training projects (Kansas and Mississippi), mothers of deviant young children were observed to follow almost all child behaviors with attention. The mothers were then trained to use differential attention procedures to increase their child's appropriate behaviors and to decrease deviant behaviors. Contrary to expectations, the differential attention procedure produced substantial increases in deviant behavior for four of the children. This adverse effect was maintained over many sessions and was replicated in single organism, reversal designs. A fifth child showed no change. A sixth child showed some improvement. However, this effect was not recovered in a second application of differential attention, and the child became worse. The results underline the importance of subject generality in applied behavior analysis and strongly suggest that service programs using operant techniques must carefully evaluate their effects on behavior.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1973 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1973.6-15