Self-regulation in the modification of disruptive classroom behavior.
Letting young students monitor and reward their own behavior beats teacher-run systems and keeps working after prizes stop.
01Research in Context
What this study did
First- and second-grade teachers were tired of constant talking and out-of-seat behavior.
The researchers asked: can kids stop their own disruption better than the teacher can?
They trained a small group to watch their own behavior, mark a card when they behaved, and give themselves a token when they met a goal.
What they found
Self-managed kids cut disruption more than kids who got the same rewards from the teacher.
The gains stuck even after tokens ended; the teacher-managed group slid back.
How this fits with other research
McDougall et al. (2017) later pooled 29 studies and found the same pattern: self-management keeps working for students with and without disabilities.
Pilgrim et al. (2000) copied the package with a 12-year-old autistic girl and curbed loud vocal outbursts, showing the idea crosses diagnoses.
Feldman et al. (1999) swapped tokens for self-played audio beeps and still cut off-task behavior in students with intellectual disability, proving the cue can change but the logic stays.
Why it matters
You can hand the clipboard to the student. Teach them to tally their own behavior and pick their own reward. The class quiets faster, and the change survives when you fade prizes. Start with one eager child, a simple count, and a tiny prize.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study compared self-regulation and external regulation procedures in the treatment of children's disruptive classroom behavior. After baseline data were collected, three of the four most disruptive children in each of 10 first- and second-grade classrooms received reinforcement for achieving low rates of disruptive behavior. The fourth child served as a control subject throughout the experiment. Two of the three experimental subjects were then taught to self-observe their own disruptive behavior. In the final reinforcement period, these subjects were given control over dispensing reinforcers to themselves, based on their self-collected behavioral data while subjects in the other experimental group continued with the externally managed reinforcement. In extinction, reinforcement was discontinued for all subjects, but one of the self-regulation subjects in each classroom continued overtly to self-observe. Results indicated that both reinforcement programs reduced disruptive behavior. The self-regulation procedures were slightly more effective in reducing disruptiveness than was the external regulation procedure, and this advantage persisted into extinction. These results suggest that self-regulation procedures provide a practical, inexpensive, and powerful alternative in dealing with disruptive behavior in children.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1972 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1972.5-443