The Effect of Schedule Thinning on Student Behavior During the Caught Being Good Game
Stretch CBGG tokens to every 5 minutes and kids still behave—so you spend less time on tokens and more on teaching.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tested the Caught Being Good Game in a first-grade classroom. They started with praise and tokens every 2 minutes. Then they stretched the wait to 5 minutes while watching two target kids and the whole class.
They tracked on-task behavior and disruptions across 13 school days.
What they found
Kids stayed engaged even when tokens came only every 5 minutes. Disruptions stayed low for the class and the two target students. Teachers spent less time handing out tokens but still saw good behavior.
How this fits with other research
Al-Jawahiri et al. (2019) looked at 28 studies where kids under 8 had reinforcement thinned after functional communication training. Their meta-analysis says thinning works best when kids already talk well. Bohan’s class-wide game shows you can thin without that speech requirement.
Boyle et al. (2021) added an activity schedule while thinning FCT with one autistic child. Both studies kept problem behavior low, but Bohan did it with a whole class and no extra visuals.
Dudley et al. (2019) thinned tokens to cut food stealing in a young learners with Prader-Willi. Single-case success matches Bohan’s class-wide success—both prove tokens still work when you wait longer.
Why it matters
You can run CBGG on a lean 5-minute schedule and still get good behavior. That frees you to teach instead of constantly handing out tokens. Try it on Monday—set a timer for 5 minutes and praise only when it beeps. You’ll cut your workload without losing control.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The Caught Being Good Game (CBGG) is a classroom management intervention which is described as a variation of the classic Good Behavior Game (GBG). It is based on the principle of positive reinforcement, such that teams of students can earn points for following the class rules during the game. Points are awarded by the teacher at different intervals during the game and these intervals were the focus of the current study. We aimed to determine if the CBGG is effective with an initially dense schedule of reinforcement which is progressively thinned. The efficacy of the CBGG in targeting academic engagement and disruptive behavior was demonstrated for one primary school class and for two target students in that class. The game remained effective when the reinforcement schedule was thinned from 2 minutes, up to 5 minutes. This has potential implications for teacher time saving while playing the game.
Behavior Modification, 2022 · doi:10.1177/01454455221129993