Home-based reinforcement and the modification of pre-delinquents' classroom behavior.
A take-home daily report card linked to simple privileges quickly lifts study behavior and slashes rule breaking at school.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three small experiments tested a daily report card sent home. Kids earned points for study behavior and following rules.
Parents gave extra TV time or other privileges when the card looked good. The teacher never handled tokens; parents ran the program after school.
Each experiment used an ABAB reversal. Baseline, card on, card off, card on again. The researchers watched study time and rule breaking.
What they found
When the card went home, study behavior jumped and rule violations dropped. When it stopped, problems came right back.
The same pattern repeated in every reversal. Home privileges tied to a simple note created big classroom gains.
How this fits with other research
Wahler (1969) tried home rewards a year earlier but saw no school change. The difference: that study rewarded home chores, not school behavior. Targeting the exact school response and telling parents what to reward let the effect cross the setting line.
Lancioni et al. (2011) later used the Good Behavior Game with high-schoolers. Both papers show large, quick drops in disruption, but one worked through individual notes home and the other through group classroom rules. The tools differ; the power of clear contingencies is the same.
Clark et al. (1970) ran a token system inside a classroom for deaf students the same year. Both studies used reversal designs and saw big gains, proving that tokens—whether handed out in class or mailed home—can reliably boost attending and rule following.
Why it matters
You can run this tomorrow. Make a 3-item check-box note: stayed seated, started work, followed directions. Send it home with a quick parent email: “If 3 boxes are checked, please give 20 min extra screen time.” No in-class tokens, no extra staff. The 1970 data show the effect flips on and off like a light switch, so you will know in days if it works for your student.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In Exp. I, five pre-delinquents from Achievement Place attended a special summer school math class where study behavior and rule violations were measured daily for each boy. The boys were required to take a "report card" for the teacher to mark. The teacher simply marked yes or no whether a boy had "studied the whole period" and "obeyed the class rules." All yeses earned privileges in the home that day but a no lost all the privileges. Using a reversal design, it was shown that privileges dispensed remotely could significantly improve classroom performance. In Exp. II and III, home-based reinforcement was also shown to be effective in improving the study behavior of two youths in public school classrooms. In addition, data from Exp. III suggest that the daily feedback and reinforcement may be faded without much loss in study behavior. Home-based reinforcement was demonstrated to be a very effective and practical classroom behavior modification technique.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1970 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1970.3-223