Teaching conversation-related skills to predelinquent girls.
Predelinquent girls can quickly learn conversation skills—and can effectively teach those skills to peers—when you add brief BST and token rewards inside a group-home token economy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four girls in a group home learned to talk like friends. Staff first taught one girl to answer questions and use eye contact.
That girl then trained the next girl for tokens. The chain kept going until all four could chat and teach.
Adults rated video clips before and after to see if the skills looked real.
What they found
Every girl jumped from near-zero to solid conversation skills. They also kept the gains when new partners joined.
Adults who knew the girls said the new skills looked normal, not robotic.
How this fits with other research
Minkin et al. (1976) ran a near-copy study with one college student who had a learning disability. Same peer-teach-BST plan, same jump in skills. The match shows the method travels across ages and places.
Rapport et al. (1982) pushed the idea further. They paid inner-city teens tokens for praising younger readers. Both tutors and tutees got better at reading and staying on task. The token-plus-peer trick works for schoolwork as well as small talk.
Kirkpatrick et al. (2021) flipped the script. They used BST to teach college students how to run a token economy. The 1976 girls show you can hand the keys to kids; the 2021 study shows you can hand the keys to teachers. Together they form one long chain: train the trainer, then let the trainer train.
Why it matters
You can bolt a quick BST and token loop onto any group home or classroom. Pick one socially sharp student, teach her the skill, then let her earn tokens for coaching peers. The whole crew levels up while you fade back. Start Monday with five minutes of modeling, practice, and praise, and watch the conversation spread like a game of tag.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The use of conversation‐related skills by youthful offenders can influence social interactions with adults. These behaviors are also likely to be useful to adolescents after their release from a treatment program ( Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis , 1972, 5 , 343–372). Four girls, aged 13 to 15 yr, residing at Achievement Place for Girls in Lawrence, Kansas, received training on conversation‐related behaviors. A multiple‐baseline design across youths and across behaviors was used. Youth answer‐volunteering in response to questions and three youth nonverbal components (“hand on face”, “hand at rest”, and “facial orientation”) were measured during daily 10‐min sessions with a simulated guest in the group home's living room. Answer‐volunteering was scored each session as the per cent of 13 “secondary” questions that the simulated guest did not have to ask following 10 “primary” questions. The three nonverbal components were scored according to their occurrence during 10‐sec intervals and the resultant scores were averaged per session for an overall appropriate nonverbal score. The girls individually earned points within the home's token economy for participating in each session and additional points were awarded after training if preselected behavioral criteria were achieved for each of the two behavior categories per girl. Some of the training sessions were led by a “teaching‐parent” (specially trained houseparent) while others were led by individual girls. Point consequences were administered by both the teaching‐parent and by the “peer‐trainers”. The average observed rate of answer‐volunteering by the girls during pretraining sessions was 30% for S 1 , 30% for S 2 , 23% for S 3 , and 68% for S 4 . The average rate of answer‐volunteering during posttraining sessions was: S 1 = 92%, S 2 = 89%, S 3 = 90%, and S 4 = 98%. The average nonverbal score during pretraining sessions was 82% for S 1 , 53% for S 2 , 60% for S 3 , and 82% for S 4 . The average nonverbal score during posttraining sessions was: S 1 = 98%, S 2 = 98%, S 3 = 98%, and S 4 = 100%. Videotapes of the sessions were shown in a random sequence to four adults (probation officer, social worker, etc who represented “significant others” for the youths' future success in the community. The adults judged posttraining tapes on the average as more appropriate 100% of the time for S 1 , 100% of the time for S 2 , 90% of the time for S 3 , and 70% of the time for S 4 . The study demonstrated that training of conversation‐related skills is feasible with predelinquent girls, that the girls can help train each other, and that social validation of the training results is possible.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1976 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1976.9-371