Contingency diagrams as teaching tools.

The author drew new teaching pictures called contingency diagrams. These maps show how A leads to B and then to C in plain boxes and arrows.

The paper is a think-piece, not an experiment. It gives teachers ready-to-copy layouts for classroom use.

No data were collected. The paper simply shows that a clear box-and-arrow picture can hold many layers of a contingency at once.

Students can see both the whole chain and each single step, making tough concepts easier to grasp.

Pisacreta (1982) came first with a triangle picture for the three-term contingency. Lyons (1995) keeps the same goal but swaps the triangle for a network of boxes, letting teachers stack extra conditions without clutter.

Lyons (1995) also published a sister review on the same year that talks about contingency ideas without offering a new picture. One paper gives the map; the other gives the tour guide speech.

Moss et al. (2009) warn that real-world data can fool you if you mix up contiguity and contingency. The classroom diagrams in Lyons (1995) do not replace that warning; they just give students a visual anchor before they tackle messy data.

If your trainees stare blankly when you say "three-term contingency," draw it as a short chain of boxes on the whiteboard. The picture takes thirty seconds, and you can point to each part while you talk. Over time learners start sketching it themselves, which means they own the concept, not just memorize words.