Effects of teacher attention on digit-reversal behavior in an elementary school child.
Shift teacher attention from errors to correct forms and digit reversals vanish fast.
01Research in Context
What this study did
One teacher and one first-grade child were in the study.
The child often wrote digits backward, like 3 or 7 reversed.
Researchers used an ABAB design. In A phases the teacher gave extra help and eye contact each time the child reversed a digit. In B phases she ignored reversals and instead praised every correct digit order.
Sessions happened during normal math seatwork. No tokens, no prizes—only teacher attention changed.
What they found
Digit reversals dropped the moment teacher praise moved to correct forms.
When extra help returned, reversals shot back up. Switching again to praise cut errors almost to zero.
The change was large and immediate, showing teacher attention alone can control reversal errors.
How this fits with other research
Schmidt et al. (1969) did the same thing first in a high-school class. They praised quiet hands and gave disapproving looks for talking out. Disruptions fell fast, proving teacher attention is power.
Speight et al. (2022) later bundled praise into a group plan called CW-FIT. Teams earn points when the teacher notices on-task work. The package still leans on attention, but adds peers and points to keep the system running in older grades.
Lord et al. (1997) moved the idea to a group home. Staff aimed for a 1:1 ratio—one positive comment for every correction. Problem behavior dropped by half, showing the praise-over-correction rule works beyond classroom walls.
Why it matters
You do not need fancy tools to fix digit reversals or other skill errors. Just flip your attention: catch correct forms and stop feeding errors with extra help, sighs, or repeated prompts. The same flip cuts disruption in high school, boosts on-task behavior in co-taught classes, and lowers problems in residential care. Try it next session: praise the first correct digit you see, ignore the reversal, and keep tally for ten minutes. The data may surprise you.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Teacher attention was systematically manipulated to modify digit-reversal behavior in an elementary school child. Almost invariably, the child reversed the order of digits (e.g., writing 21 as the sum of 5 + 7) when adding numbers yielding a two-digit sum. The child, along with classmates, was given 20 addition problems a day for the duration of the study, and the number of reversals was recorded. During an initial baseline period, the teacher responded to digit reversals by marking them as incorrect and then giving the child "extra help" until all sums were correctly ordered. The child's present and previous teacher had both responded to reversals in this manner for approximately one year before the present study began. An experimental period followed during which the rate of reversals decreased sharply. During this period, all sums were marked as correct (whether reversed or not); "extra help" with reversals was discontinued; and correct, i.e., non-reversed, response forms were responded to with a smile, a pat on the back, and a brief comment. A reversal period followed, during which the teacher responded to reversals as she had in the first baseline period. An increase in the rate of reversals to baseline level occurred within three days. A final period, replicating the first experimental period followed, and was characterized by a sharp decrease in the rate of reversals.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1972 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1972.5-157