Impulsivity in students with serious emotional disturbance: the interactive effects of reinforcer rate, delay, and quality.
Students with emotional disturbance usually pick the sooner reward even if it's smaller—use quick choice probes to find the real driver.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The researchers asked students with serious emotional disturbance to pick math problems. Each choice gave a different payoff. They changed how fast, how big, and how soon the payoff came.
The team used a reversal design. They flipped conditions back and forth to see which payoff feature controlled the students' choices.
What they found
Delay ruled the choices. When one reward came right away and the other came later, kids took the fast one even if it was smaller. Sometimes reward quality also beat rate.
The study showed a quick way to test which payoff feature is in charge for each student.
How this fits with other research
Cullinan et al. (2001) took the same idea and turned it into a treatment. Kids with ADHD learned to wait a whole day for the bigger prize. The 1993 paper only measured choices; the 2001 paper taught self-control.
Nevin et al. (2005) ran a similar choice test with children who have ADHD and with typical peers. Both groups cared most about immediacy, matching the 1993 finding that delay beats rate.
Reed et al. (1988) saw the same delay effect in adolescents with intellectual disability. Longer waits pushed them toward smaller-sooner rewards, just like the students with emotional disturbance.
Why it matters
If you work with students who seem impulsive, run a five-minute choice probe before writing your behavior plan. Offer two options that differ in timing, size, or rate. Watch which feature wins. Then build your reinforcers around that feature instead of guessing. You might find that cutting a five-second delay does more than doubling the reward amount.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We conducted two studies extending basic matching research on self-control and impulsivity to the investigation of choices of students diagnosed as seriously emotionally disturbed. In Study 1 we examined the interaction between unequal rates of reinforcement and equal versus unequal delays to reinforcer access on performance of concurrently available sets of math problems. The results of a reversal design showed that when delays to reinforcer access were the same for both response alternatives, the time allocated to each was approximately proportional to obtained reinforcement. When the delays to reinforcer access differed between the response alternatives, there was a bias toward the response alternative and schedule with the lower delays, suggesting impulsivity (i.e., immediate reinforcer access overrode the effects of rate of reinforcement). In Study 2 we examined the interactive effects of reinforcer rate, quality, and delay. Conditions involving delayed access to the high-quality reinforcers on the rich schedule (with immediate access to low-quality reinforcers earned on the lean schedule) were alternated with immediate access to low-quality reinforcers on the rich schedule (with delayed access to high-quality reinforcers on the lean schedule) using a reversal design. With 1 student, reinforcer quality overrode the effects of both reinforcer rate and delay to reinforcer access. The other student tended to respond exclusively to the alternative associated with immediate access to reinforcers. The studies demonstrate a methodology based on matching theory for determining influential dimensions of reinforcers governing individuals' choices.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1993 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-37