Improving classroom behavior in mentally retarded children through correspondence training.
Have kids state or show the target action first, then do it—this simple match game quickly fixes seat posture, on-task, and out-of-seat problems.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Reiss et al. (1982) ran three small classroom tests.
They asked kids with intellectual disability to first say or show what they would do, then do it.
The targets were simple: sit straight, stay seated, look at work.
What they found
Every child hit the goals fast and kept the gains.
Two groups even read and wrote better while behavior improved.
Both the spoken promise (say-do) and the picture promise (show-do) worked.
How this fits with other research
Lord et al. (1986) took the next step. They kept the gains alive by fading rewards and praising the child’s own rule statements.
Allison (1976) used tokens for the same age group. Tokens and correspondence both worked, but correspondence needs no poker chips or points.
Lloyd (2002) later warned the field almost stopped studying this trick after 1992. The 1982 paper is still a go-to blueprint.
Why it matters
You can start correspondence training tomorrow. Have the student point to a picture of “sitting nicely” or say “I will stay seated,” then praise the match. No extra staff, no tokens, no cost. It works in the moment and keeps working when you later thin praise.
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Join Free →Before math, ask the learner to look at a “I will stay seated” picture, say it aloud, then start the lesson—praise every match.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Except for a few studies, most research investigating correspondence training procedures has been more analogue in nature. The purpose of the present set of studies was to examine whether a "say-do" correspondence training technique could be used with children in special education classes to improve classroom behavior. The specific behaviors targeted for change included: out-of-seat behavior (Experiment 1), sitting posture (Experiment 2), and on-task behavior (Experiment 3). The say-do procedure used in Experiment 1 resembled that of previous studies, whereas that in Experiment 2 was more elaborate in the specificity of verbal statements required from the children and the feedback given them. The training procedure in Experiment 3 used a format similar to the say-do approach, but stressed visual rather than verbal cuing because it was used with nonverbal children. All three studies used single-subject designs and examined maintenance and/or generalization questions. Experiments 2 and 3 also evaluated whether concomitant changes in performance on academic tasks occurred. The results of the three studies provide strong evidence that correspondence training can be effectively used with educationally handicapped children. Moreover, the successful modification of the "say-do" to a "show-do" procedure in Experiment 3 points out the flexibility of the correspondence training approach.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1982 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1982.15-545