Transferring cues for cooperation: Helping students follow group instructions
Pair a brief sound with your group call for a week, then drop the sound—kids still follow the word alone.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Catagnus et al. (2020) worked with one elementary student who ignored group instructions.
They tried two conditions in the same class period. In one, the teacher rang a small bell, then said Everyone. In the other, she only said Everyone.
They counted how often the child lined up with peers within 5 seconds.
What they found
The bell-plus-Everyone cue lifted cooperation to a large share right away.
After ten pairings, the teacher dropped the bell. The student still followed the single word Everyone about a large share of the time the next week.
How this fits with other research
Badia et al. (1972) showed that sound location control needs differential payoff. Catagnus adds a classroom twist: pair a new cue with an old one, then fade the old.
Castañe et al. (1993) used the same fast-switch design to prove kids learn more when they say the word aloud. Both papers show alternating treatments quickly spot the better tactic.
Jessel et al. (2020) also compared two teaching tweaks in 2020. Their rich-to-lean fix and Catagnus’s bell fade both beat business-as-usual in one session.
Why it matters
You can turn any clear signal—bell, clap, chime—into a bridge to group instructions. Pair it with your call word for a week, then drop the sound. The child keeps following the word alone, and you skip lengthy error correction. Try it during transitions like lining up or cleaning centers.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In this study, we piloted a teaching procedure to help a learner attend to group pronouns (calls), such as “Everyone,” as precursors for cooperating with instructions. A student was first taught to attend to the teacher when a bell rang; the teacher then paired the bell with group call words and faded the bell out to transfer stimulus control to the calls. This antecedent intervention led to increased attending to group calls and cooperation with the instructions. We used a hybrid design of alternating treatments and multiple baselines to evaluate the effects of the intervention. We briefly assessed maintenance after the systematic fading of the intervention and again after 2 weeks. The results suggest that attending occurred through listener responding rather than through the traditional measures of eye gaze and orienting. We explore the effects in terms of stimulus control, behavioral classes, component skills, chaining, and high‐p and low‐p effects.
Behavioral Interventions, 2020 · doi:10.1002/bin.1715