Stimulus characteristics within directives: effects on accuracy of task completion.

Area of Science:

• Child Psychology
• Behavioral Science
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Children with noncompliant behavior often exhibit coexisting receptive language or vocabulary difficulties.
• Understanding directive effectiveness is key to managing challenging behaviors in pediatric outpatient settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify directive characteristics that serve as discriminative stimuli for accurate responding in young children.
• To investigate the continued stimulus control of effective/ineffective directives across different tasks.
• To examine the interaction between directive type and reinforcement contingency on task completion and disruptive behavior.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted with young children referred for noncompliant behavior and language difficulties.
• Experiment 1 used a hierarchical directive analysis to identify effective directives.
• Experiments 2 and 3 assessed directive effectiveness across tasks and in combination with reinforcement contingencies.

Main Results:

• Distinct patterns of accurate responding were identified based on directive stimulus characteristics.
• Effective and ineffective directives maintained their stimulus control across play and academic tasks.
• Behavioral escalation from inaccurate to disruptive behavior occurred when ineffective directives were paired with differential reinforcement for accurate responses.

Conclusions:

• A methodology for identifying directive characteristics influencing accurate responding can be developed.
• The interaction between directive type and reinforcement contingency significantly impacts task completion and disruptive behavior.
• Careful selection of directives and reinforcement strategies is essential for managing noncompliant behavior in children with language impairments.