The Effect of the Establishment of Conditioned Reinforcement for Reading Content on Second-Graders’ Reading Achievement
Make reading a social game—pair kids with peers or teachers for shared story talk and see comprehension and vocabulary grow in nine short sessions.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Eight second-graders spent nine short sessions of collaborative shared reading. The teacher or a peer read with one child at a time. They talked, asked questions, and praised the story.
Before the sessions, most kids said books were boring. After, seven of eight jumped 0.2 to 2.5 grade levels in comprehension and 0.3 to 3.1 in vocabulary.
What they found
Reading became a social treat. Kids worked for the chance to read together. The more they read, the better they got.
The teacher-yoked pairs gained the most. When the adult joined the chat, scores rose fastest.
How this fits with other research
Keesey et al. (1968) showed that conditioned reinforcers grow stronger each time they are paired with real rewards. Gentilini adds kids to the list: peer attention can now reinforce reading.
Gardner et al. (2009) used response cards to lift vocabulary scores. Both studies sit in general-ed classrooms and hit the same academic targets, but CSR swaps cards for conversation.
Fiene et al. (2015) meta-analysis says behavior contracts give a medium boost to schoolwork. CSR gives a similar jump without tokens or contracts—just social reading.
Why it matters
You can turn any story time into power reinforcement. Pick a partner, add quick questions and praise, and watch comprehension climb in under two weeks. No extra materials, no point boards—just kids talking about books.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
There remains a gap in the current literature as to how to reliably measure and increase students’ “voluntary reading,” based on research suggesting a relation between reading amount and reading achievement. We tested the effect of the establishment of conditioned reinforcement for reading via a collaborative shared reading (CSR) conditioning procedure on eight 2nd-grade students with and without learning disabilities and developmental disorders. This conditioning procedure was composed of opportunities for reciprocal reading and collaboration on comprehension and vocabulary tasks related to the reading content, such that partners (teacher–participant or participant–participant) were required to work together. We utilized a combined small-n experimental-control simultaneous-treatment design with a single-case multiple-probe design nested within each small group in order to compare within- and between-group differences for participants in the CSR procedure with a teacher or peer. All participants for whom conditioned reinforcement for reading was established (n = 7) demonstrated gains in reading achievement after a maximum of nine sessions (412 min), with grade-level increases between 0.2 and 2.5 on measures of reading comprehension and between 0.3 and 3.1 on measures of vocabulary. The students in the teacher-yoked condition (n = 3) demonstrated more significant gains in their average increases in achievement, although the peer-yoked procedure was also effective and possibly more viable in a classroom setting. These results suggest that a CSR procedure with a teacher or peer should be considered as a means of increasing the reading achievement of early elementary students via increases in the reinforcement value of reading.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2021 · doi:10.1007/s40617-020-00511-1