Brian K. Martens

Using Brief Functional Analysis to Select Interventions for Oral Reading

Reading interventions were applied in a brief multielement format to examine their effectiveness at improving the oral reading fluency of three students referred for reading problems. Although each student had different profiles across experimental analyses, effective interventions were identified and a mini-replication confirmed the pattern of results in each case.

Using Brief Experimental Analysis to Select Oral Reading Interventions: An Investigation of Treatment Utility

This study examined the treatment utility of brief experimental analysis for selecting skill-based oral reading interventions that targeted acquisition and fluency. Two second and one third grade student served as participants. The potentially most and least effective instructional packages identified from the brief experimental analysis for each student were alternated during an extended analysis phase. The instructional components that were compared were based on an ease of implementation hierarchy, with the brief experimental analysis used to select the hypothesized most effective instructional package for oral reading. Visual analysis of extended analysis data revealed that the hypothesized most effective combination of instructional components identified from the brief analysis produced greater initial gains in reading for two children (i.e., over 29 and 21 intervention days) and greater gains in reading throughout the extended analysis phase for the third child. Thus, the investigation provided preliminary evidence for the treatment utility of using brief experimental analysis to select effective and efficient oral reading instructional interventions. Implications, limitations, and future research topics are discussed.

Inclusionary Education in Italy A Literature Review and Call for More Empirical Research

Since the 1970s, Italy has had a national policy of integrating nearly all students with disabilities into the general education classroom. As a result, many advocates of inclusion in the United States have identified Italy as an excellent example of how wide-range inclusion can be accomplished. However, some U.S. and Italian educators have expressed concern that very little research has directly examined Italys inclusion practices and outcomes. In this article, all of the available literature in English in a 20-year period that pertained to Italys inclusion outcomes and classroom practices was reviewed. Of the studies directly addressing Italys inclusion practices, survey studies were the most common, and very few studies used experimental methodology. Furthermore, survey studies generally found outcomes considered to be favorable toward inclusion practices, whereas the results from experimental studies called the benefits of full inclusion into question. Of the studies that described interventions for students with disabilities, only a small percentage was conducted in a general education setting. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

Temporal Discounting Predicts Student Responsiveness to Exchange Delays in a Classroom Token System.

Typical assessments of temporal discounting involve presenting choices between hypothetical monetary outcomes. Participants choose between smaller immediate rewards and larger delayed rewards to determine how the passage of time affects the subjective value of reinforcement. Few studies, however, have compared such discounting to actual manipulations of reward delay. The present study examined the predictive validity of a temporal discounting procedure developed for use with children. Forty-six sixth-grade students completed a brief discounting assessment and were then exposed to a classwide intervention that involved both immediate and delayed reinforcement in a multiple baseline design across classrooms. The parameters derived from two hyperbolic models of discounting correlated significantly with actual on-task behavior under conditions of immediate and delayed exchange. Implications of temporal discounting assessments for behavioral assessment and treatment are discussed.

On the Ecological Validity of Behavior Modification

Perhaps the single most significant characteristic of the 20th century has been the logarithmic development and unbridled application of new technology. Technological advances in sciences such as chemistry, physics, and biology have been promulgated at an outstanding rate, bringing with them dramatic increases in the perceived quality of life. Spurred by public demand and often supported by monies appropriated for research and development, scientists have grasped hungrily at new innovations, adopting the maxim “if it can be done, it should be done.”

Contingency and choice: The implications of matching theory for classroom instruction

This paper describes a mathematical account of behavior known as matching theory. Matching theory evolved out of basic operant research and assumes that individuals can engage in a variety of behaviors at any moment, but they choose one to the exclusion of others. According to the matching equation, choices in behavior match the relative amount of reinforcement provided for each alternative. Although the principles of matching theory have proven useful in developing novel treatment strategies, few data exist validating the matching equation in natural human environments. Recent applications of matching theory to childrens classroom behavior are described, and the implications of matching theory for classroom management and effective teaching are discussed.

Training School Psychologists in Behavior Support Consultation

SUMMARY Although school consultation began as a means of providing assistance to individual teachers on a voluntary basis, it has evolved into a stand-alone service regulated by state and federal law. In order to meet the demand for increased accountability in the services they provide, school psychologists and other prereferral intervention team members have expressed a need to develop skills in two key areas: (a) selecting interventions that are conceptually relevant and therefore likely to be effective in responding to childrens behavior problems, and (b) providing teachers with the resources and support needed to ensure successful plan implementation. In this paper, we describe various strategies that have been shown to be effective at addressing each of these issues by drawing on recent research in school consultation and applied behavior analysis. Considerations surrounding the use of these strategies by school consultants are discussed, as are implications for increasing the effectiveness and accountability of school consultation services.

Curriculum bias in standardized tests of reading decoding

Abstract This study examined overlap between four basal reading programs and the phonetic analysis subtest of three standardized achievement measures. Raw scores, percentages of items correct, grade equivalents, and percentile scores were computed for a hypothetical student who had mastered all grapheme-phoneme correspondences taught at each grade level. The results indicated that (a) programs differed in the number and sequence of phonics skills taught; (b) percentile and grade-equivalent scores differed across programs at each grade level for a given test; and (c) the proportion of grade-equivalent scores falling at or above expected grade levels differed across tests for a given program (range of 29%–71%). The implications for selecting and interpreting standardized measures of reading decoding are discussed.

Model Description and Application

In Chap. 5, we traced the evolution of two prominent consultation models, mental health consultation and behavioral consultation, and discussed the assumptions and principles underlying each. An approach to strategic communication based on Raven’s social power and interpersonal influence models (Erchul & Raven, 1997) was reviewed briefly, followed by a discussion of issues (e.g., the 14 “know the territory” questions, the A VICTORY model) that should be addressed in order to gain successful entry into the service delivery network of schools. In this chapter, we discuss research findings that point to the limitations inherent in relying on any one consultation model as a means of delivering comprehensive services in the schools. Based on these limitations, we present an integrated model of school consultation that we believe is particularly appropriate for use by internal consultants (e.g., school psychologists) and that combines the elements of social influence and professional support within a problem-solving context. Each of these elements (problem solving, social influence, professional support) is discussed as a component task of the school consultation process, which begins after the consultant has a basic understanding of schools and classrooms and has successfully entered the service delivery network. The chapter concludes by considering the outcomes of successful school consultation in terms of improving the learning and adjustment of children as clients and improving the professional functioning of teachers as consultees.

A context analysis of contingent teacher attention

The present two-experiment study compared the relationship between on-task student behavior and three measures of contingent teacher attention: total amount, contingent amount, and proportion of the total amount contingent on the target behavior. Toward this goal, a real-time observational system was developed for assessing multiple categories of teacher attention contingent upon a variety of student behavior categories. Using this system, observational data were collected in a self-contained classroom for a mentally retarded adolescent (Experiment 1) and in a remedial summer school classroom for a regular first-grade student (Experiment 2). Results from the two experiments showed the proportional measure of contingent teacher attention to account for nearly five times more variance in time on-task than contingent amount. These findings are discussed in terms of the importance of concurrently available teacher attention in the functional analysis of classroom behavior.