Amy J. Henley

Should You Order the Feedback Sandwich? Efficacy of Feedback Sequence and Timing

This study sought to investigate the efficacy of feedback sequence—namely, the feedback sandwich—and timing on performance. Undergraduate participants performed simulated office tasks, each associated with a feedback sequence (positive–corrective–positive, positive–positive–corrective, corrective–positive–positive, and no feedback), presented in a counterbalanced fashion. Half of the participants received individual verbal feedback delivered privately by the researcher immediately after each session, and the remaining participants received the same type of feedback immediately before each session. The aggregate data suggested no feedback was the most efficacious for participants who experienced feedback prior to performance, and the corrective–positive–positive sequence was the most efficacious for participants who received feedback following performance. Differences in feedback timing were not significant except for the no feedback condition. These results document that the feedback sandwich was not the most efficacious sequence, despite claims to the contrary.

Evidence-Based Interventions

Our everyday lives contain numerous examples of the pursuit of quick fixes and fad treatments lacking objective research to support their use. The Internet is saturated with anecdotal stories of effectiveness and other false claims, which make it challenging to separate legitimate treatment options from offerings by “snake oil salesmen.” Humans are not immune to their effects. This phenomenon is commonly found in resources for autism treatment and can have devastating effects on consumers and families. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to describe different approaches to understanding phenomena (science, pseudoscience, and antiscience) and how to distinguish empirical evidence and evidence-based practice. A careful review of the criteria that constitute evidence-based practice is offered. The chapter also provides recommendations for practitioners to stay abreast of the scientific literature and presents a model for addressing implementation of unsubstantiated interventions. Helpful checklists and key questions for use in clinical practice accompany the chapter.

A crowdsourced nickel-and-dime approach to analog OBM research: A behavioral economic framework for understanding workforce attrition.

Incentives are a popular method to achieve desired employee performance; however, research on optimal incentive magnitude is lacking. Behavioral economic demand curves model persistence of responding in the face of increasing cost and may be suitable to examine the reinforcing value of incentives on work performance. The present use-inspired basic study integrated an experiential human operant task within a crowdsourcing platform to evaluate the applicability of behavioral economics for quantifying changes in workforce attrition. Participants included 88 Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers who earned either a

Time constraints in the alcohol purchase task.

0.05 or

Temporal framing and the hidden-zero effect: rate-dependent outcomes on delay discounting: TEMPORAL FRAMING AND HIDDEN-ZERO

0.10 incentive for completing a progressively increasing response requirement. Analyses revealed statistically significant differences in breakpoint between the two groups. Additionally, a novel translation of the Kaplan-Meier survival-curve analyses for use within a demand curve framework allowed for examination of elasticity of workforce attrition. Results indicate greater inelastic attrition in the

Function-Altering Effects of Rule Phrasing in the Modulation of Instructional Control.

0.05 group. We discuss the benefits of a behavioral economic approach to modeling employee behavior, how the metrics obtained from the elasticity of workforce attrition analyses (e.g., P max ) may be used to set goals for employee behavior while balancing organizational costs, and how economy type may have influenced observed outcomes.

Discussion of Behavioral Principles in Journal of Organizational Behavior Management: An Update

Hypothetical purchase tasks have advanced behavioral economic evaluations of demand by circumventing practical and ethical restrictions associated with delivering drug reinforcers to participants. Numerous studies examining the reliability and validity of purchase task methodology suggest that it is a valuable method for assessing demand that warrants continued use and evaluation. Within the literature examining purchase tasks, the alcohol purchase task (APT) has received the most investigation, and currently represents the most experimentally validated variant. However, inconsistencies in purchase task methodology between studies exist, even within APT studies, and, to date, none have assessed the influence of experimental economic constraints on responding. This study examined changes in Q0 (reported consumption when drinks are free), breakpoint (price that suppresses consumption), and &agr; (rate of change in demand elasticity) in the presence of different hypothetical durations of access to alcohol in an APT. One hundred seventy-nine participants (94 males, 85 females) from Amazon Mechanical Turk completed 3 APTs that varied in the duration of time at a party (i.e., access to alcoholic beverages) as described in the APT instructions (i.e., vignette). The 3 durations included 5-hr (used by Murphy et al., 2013), 1-hr, and 9-hr time frames. We found that hypothetical duration of access was significantly related to Q0 and breakpoint at the individual level. Additionally, group-level mean &agr; decreased significantly with increases in duration of access, thus indicating relatively higher demand for alcohol with longer durations of access. We discuss implications for conducting hypothetical purchase task research and alcohol misuse prevention efforts.

Basic Research Considerations for Performance Management of Staff

Recent research suggests that presenting time intervals as units (e.g., days) or as specific dates, can modulate the degree to which humans discount delayed outcomes. Another framing effect involves explicitly stating that choosing a smaller-sooner reward is mutually exclusive to receiving a larger-later reward, thus presenting choices as an extended sequence. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 201) recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire in a 2 (delay framing) by 2 (zero framing) design. Regression suggested a main effect of delay, but not zero, framing after accounting for other demographic variables and manipulations. We observed a rate-dependent effect for the date-framing group, such that those with initially steep discounting exhibited greater sensitivity to the manipulation than those with initially shallow discounting. Subsequent analyses suggest these effects cannot be explained by regression to the mean. Experiment 2 addressed the possibility that the null effect of zero framing was due to within-subject exposure to the hidden- and explicit-zero conditions. A new Amazon Mechanical Turk sample completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire in either hidden- or explicit-zero formats. Analyses revealed a main effect of reward magnitude, but not zero framing, suggesting potential limitations to the generality of the hidden-zero effect.

A Survey of Staff Training and Performance Management Practices: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This study evaluated the effects of four instructional variants on instruction following under changing reinforcement schedules using an operant task based on Hackenberg and Joker’s Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 62, 367–383 (1994) experimental preparation. Sixteen college-aged adults served as participants and were randomly assigned to one of four instruction conditions (directive, generic, non-directive, and control). Results suggest textual verbal behavior modulated instruction following. Specifically, directive and generic instructions produced greater levels of instructional control and relatively lower levels of schedule control compared to non-directive instructions. Thus, participants in the directive and generic groups responded in accordance with the instructions even when schedules of reinforcement favored deviation from the instructed pattern. In contrast, participants in the non-directive group responded toward the optimal pattern. In the control condition, participant responding was variable but toward the optimal pattern. Findings are interpreted within the framework of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior and formulation of rule governance.

Quantifying efficacy of workplace reinforcers: An application of behavioral economic demand to evaluate hypothetical work performance.

ABSTRACT This study replicated the methods of a previous review and assessed the frequency with which discussions of basic behavioral principles occurred in a sample of research and case studies published in Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. A total of 127 research and case studies published between 2006 and 2015 were reviewed; 67 included a discussion of behavioral principles. The percentage of research articles and case studies discussing behavioral principles was higher than that found in previous research. The most frequently described principle was reinforcement. Our findings also documented a higher percentage of laboratory studies discussed behavioral principles.