Camila Harumi Sudo

Treinamento de mães: instruções e fichas no auxílio à tarefa escolar

This study investigated the effects of instructions or instructions plus tokens training procedures, used by mothers, on the following behavioral categories: “praise the child’s behavior”, “instruct the child”, and “do the task for the child”. Seven (7) mother-child pairs participated in the study. Mothers were chosen randomly and placed in two groups (Group 1 and Group 2). During Phase 1 of the study, mothers were asked to help their children with one task including math figures and problems. In Phase 2, mothers of Group 1 and 2 received instructions about how to help their children with their homework. The mothers of Group 2 used tokens additionally, as a consequence, for the mothers’ behavior of praise the child’s behavior and instruct the child instead of doing their homework. In Phase 3, the procedures from Phase 1 were used with both groups. Data from the study suggest that the training method used did not have any effect on the results. In addition, results show that individualized training can meet the specific needs of mothers more efficiently, and are more interesting than group training. Key words: mothers training, tokens and instructions, school homework.